Dido's Armada
by Emerald Force
Summary: This story reveals in detail the consequences of Aeneas's departure from the city of Carthage.
1. Arms and a Pack Mule I Sing

"What! Fifty shekels?!" cried Aeneas, incredulous. In his mind, he tried to convert between Phoenician shekels and Trojan drachmas, only to shake his head in frustration. Unlike yours truly, Aeneas had never been much of a math (or physics) person. "No, no that can't be right," he said, "He has to be worth more than that! Are you nuts?"

The Trojan prince had been invited to a feast at Dido's castle later that evening, and wanting to make a good impression on the nutty queen, desired to buy a shiny new helmet to wear at the dinner. It had not occurred to him that wearing a helmet to dinner would actually make him look REALLY weird, but then again, Aeneas was a lot more absent minded than your average great warrior. Being broke at the moment, Aeneas had decided to sell his pack mule, Achates.

"Oh, come on, look at his fur! It's such a mess!" exclaimed the prospective customer, "He must be what, like fifty years old by now? Also, look at how worn out his hooves are. What exactly did you have this poor beast carrying? Stones up the Great Pyramid? I will pay up to fifty shekels for him, and not a shekel more!"

"I must say," interrupted Brian, "He does have a point about the fur. I doubt this old pack mule would rank very high on the nymph scale of beauty."

"Oh for goodness sake!" shouted Aeneas, "You're not helping, Brian." Aeneas had originally taken with him three of his best Trojan warriors to accompany him to the flea market - Brian, Jake, and brave Serestus, but Jake had somehow gotten lost in the large crowd, and Aeneas could only hope he would manage to make his way back to camp.

"Hey brave Serestus, what do you think?" asked Aeneas, "Should I sell him for fifty?"

"Your call," replied brave Serestus, "But it could work out. The helmet costs eighty shekels, so if you sold Achates for fifty, and then sold what remains of Acestes's wine for thirty, you could afford it."

"Hmmm," thought Aeneas to himself. The mule had been a gift from his fairy godmother, Elsa, when he was 13. It had been an amazing help to him, able to carry the heaviest loads while living on a minimum of hay. It was tough parting with it, but he really did want to impress Dido.

"Alright," he said at last, wiping away a tear, "I'll give him to you for fifty."

"Deal," said the customer, a middle aged Phoenician man wearing a pair of pink crocs and a wool tie over his leather business suit. He handed Aeneas a yellow plastic bucket filled with coins, grabbed Achates's harness, and led him off into the sunset.

"Well," said Brian, "Are you going to count the coins to make sure there are fifty?" Brian had always been a very practical and down to Earth person. In all honesty, he probably should have been Priam's royal advisor instead of a warrior, although he was pretty good at wielding his frying pan as well, having been taught how to fight with it by his mother, the goddess Rapunzel.

Aeneas, somewhat shocked, only shook his head no, too tired and sad to count through all the money. "Do you think he'll treat Achates well?" he asked at last.

"Well, he had a negative ranking on the nymph scale of beauty," replied Brian.

"Dude," said brave Serestus, "That doesn't even answer his question. I'd say yeah, he seemed like a pretty good guy. Don't worry about it. Oh, hey, look, there's Jake!"

Aeneas turned around, only to see a figure that looked like Jake sitting on a bench eating a snow cone. "Could be…" said Aeneas, "Are you sure? I left my contacts on the ship and can't see too well."

"Well, I guess there's only one way to find out," said brave Serestus, beginning to walk across the market toward the figure.

Aeneas sighed, before getting up and following. "Come on, Brian," he said, "Let's go before we lose him too.


	2. How They Found David

"Shhhhh. Do you hear anything?" asked Brian. The others strained their ears, listening for movement. The unmistakable sound of a large beast crashing through the forest reached their ears from somewhere far off. Cautiously, they headed towards it.

The Trojans and Phoenicians were on a hunting party, and had split up into smaller groups to catch as much game as they could. Brain, Dido, Aeneas, Ascanius, Jake, brave Serestus, and two other Phoenician warriors whose names I forget formed one group.

"Wait, stop," said Dido, "If all eight of us advance at once, it'll hear us and flee. Two of us need to go and identify what exactly it is. If it's worth killing, we'll come back and the rest of you can work your way around it and surround it."

"Sounds like a good plan," replied Aeneas, "Marvelling at Dido's intelligence, as well as her beauty. Come on, let's go." He headed off along with Dido, leaving the rest behind."

"Hey," said Ascanius, "Wouldn't it be funny if my dad came back and we had all vanished?"

"Ummm, I guess…" said Brian.

Ascanius began walking off.

"Hey, get back here," said Jake, "Aeneas would kill us, literally, if something happened to you."

A large roar sounded in the distance.

"A lion! A lion!" shouted Ascanius excitedly, "Let's go!" He took off, running through the forest as fast as his little legs could carry him.

"Whoa, wait up!" shouted Jake. He hadn't been exaggerating the consequences of allowing Ascanius to be hurt, and the young boy was now running after what was apparently a lion. Jake took off as well, followed by Brian and a Phoenician soldier. The other Phoenician soldier and brave Serestus had gotten caught up in a very deep discussion about laser eye surgery and had not noticed Ascanius's flight.

Ascanius may have been small, but he was full of energy. Jake, however, was pretty fit, even for a Trojan warrior, thanks to hours of swim practice. Unfortunately, like Brian, he was weighed down by his metal armor and thus, although they lost no ground on Ascanius, they gained none either. Ascanius, being small, also did not have to go through the trouble of ducking under the various tree branches that often got in their way.

"ASCANIUS, IULUS, ILUS, OR WHATEVER YOU GO BY, GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!" roared Jake, in as intimidating a way as you would expect from a great Trojan warrior like him.

Ascanius/Iulus/Ilus, however, if he heard him at all, just kept running. All of them were gaining ground on the animal, which turned out to be a boar. Although none of them noticed it, preoccupied with dodging tree branches and jumping over stones, the boar was looking more and more tired by the minute.

At last, the boar stopped, exhausted, and turned around. Ascanius, still as energetic as ever, rushed toward it with his spear."

The boar, seeing Ascanius, made a half hearted effort to get into a fighting position, half snarling and looking as if about to charge. Suddenly, a sad expression spread across its face. Its shoulders slumped, and it seemed to give itself up to Ascanius. The boy, confused, stopped running and approached cautiously, wondering if this was some trick. To the surprise of everyone, including Magistra, who wasn't even there, the boar began to speak.

"Please, mister random child who looks young enough to be cuddled by strangers but old enough to hunt lions, spare my life. If you desire honor and glory for slaying a wild boar, then you will gain it from killing me, for I am indistinguishable from any real boar. To slay me, however, would be murder, and would cause you to fall in the eyes of the gods. I am not a boar, but a man, transformed into the form of a beast by the the sorceress Circe, because she was really bored."

'You lie!" said the Phoenician warrior, who had just arrived, "Circe does not transform men on a whim. You must have approached her seeking a favor. She helps those who defeat her in a hot dog eating contest, and transforms those who do not. You fool! If you were unsure in your ability, if you did not possess her true name, the secret to beating her, then you should not have gone to her! Oh, woe to you!"

The boar lowered its head even more in shame. "Yes, it is true," he said, "I set sail from my native land seeking her, hoping to gain knowledge of the whereabouts of my brother. I presumed him to be drowned at sea, but wanted to make sure. She, however, upon hearing my request, transformed me into my present likeness with one wave of her wand, and with a second wave, I found myself on this land."

"You are in the woods by Carthage," said the Phoenician warrior, "And had you not come across me, would most likely have been forced to wander around these forests until your death, whether by a spear or old age. I possess a certain amount of knowledge in the arcane arts, which I learned from Elsa's weirdo husband, but not nearly enough to rival that of Circe's. Still, I believe I have the means to help you, for when performing magic for the aid of others, I am authorized to make use of the power of the Emperor over the Sea."

The boar, Ascanius, Brian, and Jake watched as the Phoenician warrior took out his waterskin and lay it upon the ground. Narrowing his eyes in concentration, he made a series of gestures over it and chanted in an ancient tongue. Taking up the waterskin again, he opened it, dipped his fingers into it, and flung the water into the air. As it sprinkled down on the boar, he sang,

"As this water here is falling,

I the undines now am calling,

And by the power of Juno's brain,

I order ya'll to bring me rain."

For a moment, the five humans (including the boar, who was really a human) stood still, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did.

"Well then," said the Phoenician warrior, looking around awkwardly, "Oh, wait, silly me, wrong spell." He dipped his fingers into the waterskin and once again sprinkled the consecrated water onto the boar, this time saying, "If you were born a boar, remain a boar; but if you were born a man, by virtue of this water resume your proper form."

There was a blinding flash light that forced the four warriors to close their eyes. When they opened them, they were surprised to see David. "Thanks guys," he said, "I thought I'd never regain my original form. Hey, Jake, how well do you think you did on that last test?"

"I don't know," said Jake, "They're not up on Tyler yet, but I'm pretty sure I beat that lunatic who sits right in front of me."

"Well," said the Phoenician warrior, "I'm glad I did manage to remember the right spell, although I do wonder what the first one was supposed to do." Suddenly, an ear shattering blast of thunder shook the Earth, and the sky grew dark with impossibly thick clouds that seemed to come from nowhere.

"Oh," continued the Phoenician warrior, "I remember now!"


	3. What Really Happened in the Cave

"Where are you going?" asked Aeneas, "The palace is the other way."

"Trust me, I know another place we can go," shouted Dido, making her way through the woods, "Follow me." Her voice was half drowned out by the sound of thunder and falling rain.

Aeneas followed the queen and soon found himself entering a large cave. "Oh, how very convenient," he said.

"Yeah," said Dido, "My grandfather was a bootlegger during the prohibition and used to hide large caskets of wine here. Now, I just come here secretly at night sometimes to sing. It's fun, but I'm terrible at it so I only do it when no one's around, which, of course, doesn't happen very often when you're queen. Well, looks like we made it before getting too terribly soaked."

"Yeah, that's quite true," replied Aeneas, "Man, Jupiter must be really mad at someone. I hope it's not my mom. It looks like we're going to be stuck here a while. I wish I had brought my Wii, but then again, there are no outlets in here anyway."

"Well, I do have a chess board," said Dido, "It'll have to do for now." She set her purse down and pulled out a small wooden box, opening it to form a chess board. The pieces had been contained inside. "I think one of the pawns is missing though," she said, "We can use a pebble or something. Do you want to be black or white?"

"Doesn't matter to me," answered Aeneas, "Boy it's been a while since I last played though." The two of them began setting up the game board."

"You switched the knight and bishop," said Dido, "The knight goes by the rook,"

"Oh, sorry 'bout that," said Aeneas, moving the pieces to the correct places, "I should have known that. I usually always open with the twin knight defense."

"Not a bad opening, although I prefer the Phoenician dragon," said Dido.

"Oh, that's a new one for me,' replied Aeneas, "How does it work?"

"It's like the Sicilian dragon except it's Phoenician," said Dido, "White goes first. Your side's white so go,"

Aeneas moved his left knight forward, and the game began. Pretty soon, the game was no longer just a means for passing the time. It became a tedious struggle, as both the Carthaginian queen and Trojan prince sought to impress the other with cunning. By midgame, neither possessed a material or strategical advantage. In addition, both had enormous headaches.

"Wow, half our pieces are gone and neither of us has gained anything," said Dido, sighing and stretching her arms.

"Yeah," said Aeneas, "Unfortunately, that's how it always is in war as well. Nations fight over stupid things, and their armies spill each others' blood onto the battlefields for years. In the end, whatever is gained by the winning side is only a fraction of what is lost. It's dumb, but that's how it is."

"I know what you mean," said Dido, "People are never fully alive these days. They are like zombies. Terra dreams of children who will appreciate the life she has given them by making the most of it, and not extinguishing it by the millions through senseless fighting. She wants children who will mature, grow up, and leave her behind, establishing colonies on distant stars, and bringing joy throughout the universe. She wants to create beauty, and desires that her creations become creators themselves and likewise create beauty, such that the entire time-space continuum will swell with it. Someday, the stars will align, the Elder Gods will come down, Cthulhu will rise up from the ocean depths, and the human race will be in danger. Then, the human race will need the arts of Mars, of which we know nothing about. The silly Trojan war that destroyed your beloved city, World War 2, the Thirty Years War - all this is play fighting, and Mars laughs at us, thinking we are all powerful with our nukes, EMPs, RPGs, and disgusting biological and chemical weapons. In reality, we have not the faintest clue as to what it truly means to fight - to wield the sword of Mars to uphold the principles of Saturn. Really, a woman? You're going to go to war for an entire decade over a woman?! She wasn't even that pretty anyways. Trust me, I saw the movie. You were in the movie too. I saw you! You looked pretty cute, hehe. Seriously though. Truth, justice, wisdom, and love - these are the things worth fighting for. He who can set aside his ego and embody these four principles, he will establish peace between the nations." Upon saying this, Dido, feeling sleepy, laid her head on Aeneas's lap.

"Wow, I have no idea what you just said," said Aeneas, "You talk too fast. In any case, I suppose you don't want to end this war though," he joked, referring to the game of chess."

Dido lazily grabbed her queen and placed it next to Aeneas's king. "There," she said, "They fall in love, get married, and both sides become one and live happily ever after. The end."

"Ah," said Aeneas, feeling drowsy himself. Outside the cave, the endless pitter patter of raindrops continued. "So, I guess no one wins this round," he said, grinning.

"No," said Dido, "They both win. They go on to live and rule peacefully. Later on, their descendants inhabit other kingdoms as well, and bring peace to them. Because they no longer waste time killing each other, they divert their efforts to advancing in science and technology. They create free energy devices to replace their dependence on fossil fuels. The sky becomes clear and open, free from pollution, and acid rain is no more. They learn from the gnomes and elves the secrets of harnessing the energy of the Earth, and by using this knowledge, grow large fields of healthy crops without resorting to questionable genetic engineering techniques. A few times a year, they hold celebrations to thank the universe for giving them life, and celebrate their blessings."

"Haha, nice one," said Aeneas, "If only such a world could exist."

"Oh, it most certainly can," replied Dido, "Sleep, dear, and together, let's dream this world into being." She closed her eyes, and in a moment, was sleeping peacefully - or so it seemed…

Aeneas also felt unusually lethargic. Laying down as well, he closed his eyes. His head spun and all went black. As it turned out, their weariness had not been due to the morning hunting, as each had assumed, but due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Unbeknownst to Aeneas and Dido, there had been a gas leak in the cave's basement during their chess game, and both now lay on the floor overcome by the fumes. Luckily, at that moment, Brian and Jake arrived.


	4. Dido Didn't Die

Dido lifted the silver chalice to her mouth, prepared to end her life. Aeneas was about to sail away forever, taking with him her honor, her heart, and any desire to live.

Her hand trembled, sending ripples across the insidious black surface of the poisoned wine. Weak with fear, she set the chalice down. Three times, she had raised it up to drink, and three times now, she found herself unable to do so. "Oh, what a coward I am!" she thought to herself, "Oh three and four times blessed are all those men and women, braver than I, who have fearlessly travelled down the path of no return - to Hades and beyond. Have I any reason not to follow them? I will never be happy again in this life. I will never again know joy, and surely such a life is not worth living."

She sat there, staring into the chalice. Her own reflection, grim and condescending, stared back. Her mind empty, a sudden flash of insight came to her. "Indeed, I can no longer live and be happy," she thought to herself, "But I can certainly live to make others happy. Hmmmm, that's a thought. But no, no, no… The torment is too great. Every breath I take will be an eternal reminder that I will never be with him - that he is destined to take on another bride in Italy, far from Carthage. No, it is too much. Let me… let me die."

The Carthaginian queen clasped her hands before her. "Oh great goddess Diana," she prayed, "Oh great huntress, lady of the moon. You who have never failed to hear my prayers, do not forsake me now. Lend me your courage and strength, that I may fearless consume this liquid comestible and sink down to Hades."

Saying this, she once again grabbed the chalice. Suddenly, she heard her phone ringing. Grabbing it, she checked the caller ID - unknown number. "Hmm, that's odd," she thought to herself, opening the phone. "Hello, this is Dido, queen of Carthage, how may I help you?"

"Hey Dido, it's me, Diana," said Diana, "Ummmmm, did you just say what I think you said…?"

"What?" asked Dido, "About wanting to die?"

"Oh, so you did say that," said Diana, "What's wrong dear?"

Dido proceeded to explain the whole situation. "You see," she finally ended, "I just can't live without him anymore. I'm sorry. I love him, and by leaving me, he has taken away from me all light in my life. I simplyI cannot continue to function in the endless night my life has become. Give me the strength to end my live, goddess, or kill me yourself. In any case, I will not live to see the next sunrise, dying by my own hand, yours, or a broken heart long before then."

"Hmmm, I see," replied Diana, "Here, come up to Olympus for a sec. There's something you should probably see." With that the, goddess snapped her fingers.

Dido blinked away a tear, and upon opening her eyes, found herself sitting on a couch next to Diana in a brightly lit room in front of a T.V.

"Hey!" said Diana, "Boy do you look a mess. Don't worry though. Once you see this, you'll be ready to move on with your life and forget about that silly old Trojan prince. Diana grabbed the remote and turned on the T.V. Immediately, the music video for The Climb started playing, and the surround sound system came to life. The queen and the goddess lay on the couch watching Miley walk, smell a rose, and play guitar as the music blasted into their ears. When it had finished, Diana turned to Dido.

"Well," she said, "Feeling any better?"

"Um, not really…" said Dido, "I had no idea what was going on in that video."

"Yeah," replied Diana, "Probably because she's singing in English and not Latin. Shoot. I probably should have thought of that beforehand."

"Look Diana," said Dido, "I know you mean well, but there's absolutely nothing that can help me now. From the moment I set eyes on him, I was cursed, and my life was set on a path to the utmost happiness, or utmost gloom, and it is the latter which has come to pass. If I were to live, it would have to be far removed from everyone I know, and every remnant of my past life. I can no longer live as Dido, dishonored and heartbroken. If you can, goddess, place me on some deserted island where I might live out the rest of my days gloomily, but peacefully."

"Well that would be a pretty pointless existence!" exclaimed Diana, "If you're just going to mope around on some deserted island for the next few decades, you might as well mope around in Hades. I can take you far from your past - far from Aeneas, and Carthage, and all painful reminders of your failed romance. I am a goddess, after all, and can bend the folds of space and time, but I cannot give this to you for free. What are you prepared to give back to the universe in exchange for a new life?"

At once, Dido remembered her earlier flash of insight as she had sat at the table contemplating her impending death. Without hesitation, she spoke. "Wretched as I am, I confess that I fear death and do not feel ready for it. Though my life be miserable, I value it greatly. Therefore, I promise that if I am taken far from here, far where no person who knows me can ever find me, then I will spend the rest of my days destined to helping others experience the joy and happiness forever out of my own reach."

"Fair enough," said Diana. She grabbed the remote, turned off the T.V., and snapped her fingers again. Instantly, all went black for Dido. She felt herself falling into a vast void, spinning faster and faster, losing all sense of direction in the process. When at last, she stopped moving, she opened her eyes and found herself standing on a stage before an enormous audience holding a microphone. A large banner at the back of the auditorium said "2015 International Stand Up Comedy Championships." As the announcer said her name, the crowd went wild, eager to hear her performance.

Diana still sat upon the couch in her lounge on Mount Olympus. "Well, she thought to herself, I suppose her sister and friends will need some form of closure. Otherwise, they'll spend the rest of their days wondering what happened to her. Hmmm…"

Getting off the couch, she flew down to Vulcan's forge in her silver chariot. "Hey dude, I need your expertise," she said.

"Sure thing," said Vulcan, "What do you need made?"

And thus, a mere hour later, Diana flew by the palace of Carthage, dropping into Dido's room the Didobot 2000, programmed to self destruct in a very specific manner later that evening.


	5. The Launch of the Fleet

Brian, Jake, and brave Serestus were sitting at one of the many small coffee shops scattered around Carthage. Aeneas had ordered all men onto the boats, planning to set sail at dawn. The three of them, however, had decided to take one last walk around the city. Relaxing with a cappuccino in hand, Jake pestered Brian for the answers to that week's Latin worksheet. Brave Serestus, however, took German, and feeling left out, sat quietly polishing his watch. Suddenly, the muffled sound of shouting arose from far off, getting closer and closer until it sounded as if all of Carthage or ancient Tyre were letting enemy armies into the gates. The three of them jumped up in a panic, eager to learn the cause of the commotion. They did not have to search long. Looking out the window, they saw an enormous five story tall bird covered with thousands of feathers, tongues, and ears running through the street as alarmed citizens fled as far from the monster as possible.

"What the…" said brave Serestus.

"I think I faced a boss like this in a video game once," said Jake, "Maybe I could do it again, only in real life this time."

"Nah," said Brian, "Let's not risk it without Aeneas. He should be here soon, assuming the Carthaginians don't kill it first." At that moment, the door opened, and an important looking Carthaginian official walked in, escorted by two soldiers.

"Attention all!," said the official loudly, almost shouting, "The queen of Carthage has been killed by the hand of a Trojan prince, who has just fled. The bulk of the Carthaginian army is busy fighting Iarbas. Since by law, all able-bodied men are part of the Carthaginian reserve force, the former queen's sister, Anna, now queen herself, demands that you all assemble at the docks this instant."

He spoke firmly, but in truth, there was no reason to be so loud. With the exception of the shop owner who was an old lady, Brian, Jake, and brave Serestus were the only customers present at that hour of the night.

The official stood staring at the trio, who sat staring at each other, trying to comprehend the situation.

"To the docks now!" said the official, now borderline shouting. Brian was the first to get up, deducing from the official's words that Aeneas had left already, and that to obey the new queen's orders was the safest course of action at the moment. Jake and brave Serestus followed Brian, still trying to take everything in.

The official and one of the soldiers escorting him headed off to the other shops in the vicinity, while the remaining soldier escorted the three Trojans down to the docks. Upon arriving, the first thing they noticed was the empty section where the Trojan fleet had once been.

"Well, this is wonderful," said Brian, sarcastically, "I wonder what Magistra would do."

"Magistra can fly. Remember?" answered Jake, "Man, it must be nice having superpowers like that."

"Oh yeah, I forgot about that," said Brian, "Well, we can swim though, right? It's not as fast as flying, but it will get us to the ships."

"That's assuming we can swim faster than the ships are moving," said Jake, "At least according to the laws of physics."

Brian racked his giant brain for a solution. Before he could come up with one, a trumpet blared out.

"Attention everyone!" shouted Anna, from somewhere in the midst of the large crowd of men gathered at the docks, "I regret that this will be a poorly planned out operation, however it's necessity was created without warning, and we are short on time. Aeneas has fled Carthage. All of you will assemble on the reserve warships at section 5 of the docks. Try to divide yourselves evenly between the fifteen ships there. Once you have entered a ship, you will find a suit of armor and a sword lying on each bunk in hold. Pick a bunk. It will be yours for the time being until we find the vile prince and sink his fleet. I apologize for the lack of planning and organization, however with each passing moment, that Trojan villain sails further away from our grasp. Hurry, therefore, in the name of the dead queen, my sister, and avenge her!"

The section of the crowd near enough to Anna to hear her began moving over to section 5 of the docks, where several large warships were held. Those in the back followed those who knew where they were going. Everyone felt the tension in the air, and did his best to remain silent and board a vessel as quickly as possible. In the large crowd, Brian, Jake, and brave Serestus did their best to remain together. Miraculously, Jake didn't get lost again.

Having entered one of the many vessels, the men went below deck to the bunks to await further instruction. "Wow," said Brian, "It's a good thing we were all too lazy to wear our armor while going out tonight. If we had been, we would surely have been killed."

"True, without falsehood, certain, and most true," said Jake, "Boy, I sure hope we fail our mission. I don't want to sink Aeneas."

The three of them sat contemplating the irony of their situation when the ship's captain arrived.

"Alright folks, listen up!" he shouted, "All of you go to sleep right now and get your rest. In the meantime, Queen Anna will prepare a plan of attack, as well as construct some means of organizing and keeping track of all of you. In the morning, hopefully we will have everything sorted out and you will all be briefed. In the meantime, good night."

"Wow, this really is a poorly planned out operation," said brave Serestus.

"Actually," replied Brian, "By the looks of it, it wasn't planned out at all."

"Of course it wasn't," said Jake, "They had no idea Aeneas was going to kill Dido. It's all so sudden."

"Ok, Aeneas definitely did not kill Dido," said Brian, "I have no idea what that woman was talking about. In any case, this is too much for one night. Tomorrow, I'll wake up and find myself on Aeneas's ship, wondering what on Earth I ate for dinner the previous night to give me such weird dreams. Or, maybe I'll wake up in the coffee shop, having fallen asleep while you two were talking, and then vow never to drink Carthaginian coffee again." With that, Brian lay down on his bunk and fell fast asleep. Within a minute, the rest of the rooms inhabitants, confused and tired as well by the night's events, followed suit.

Anna was the last to go to sleep, having pieced together an outline for a plan of battle. For an hour or so, the fleet sailed on as the soldiers and crew slept peacefully. Had any of them been awake an hour or two later, they would have seen a thick fog up ahead, and had they remained on deck watching, they would have seen the fleet sail into the fog as it grew thicker and darker by the minute. A few minutes later, in the midst of the swirling clouds surrounding them, they would have seen brief flashes of colorful light in the distance and heard a multitude of faint ghostly sounds, some hauntingly enchanting, and others quite terrifying. When the ship would finally come out of the fog, the more observant would have realized that the air seemed slightly warmer and waves slightly calmer than before. All, however, were asleep, oblivious to these happenings.


	6. Dawn of an Eternal Night

Brian lay in bed with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. In the bed underneath his, he could hear Jake snoring. Taking a deep breath, Brian suddenly sat up, began pumping his arms furiously, and screamed "YEEAAAHHHHH!" He did this every morning upon waking up to get his blood moving and prevent him from falling back asleep. His roommates on Aeneas's ship had learned to get used to it. His roommates on this strange Carthaginian ship he was now on, however, most likely had not. The sound of snoring in the room ceased. Some people grunted. Others rolled over. "Oh, whoops," thought Brian to himself. He had forgotten about the previous night's events.

Brian quickly lay down on his bed again, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. For a few minutes, he remained still as the rest of the crewmates fell back asleep. Because of ROTC, he had gotten used to waking up earlier than everyone else. A minute or so later, he sat up again and climbed down, deciding to take a walk throughout the ship.

Leaving the room, the Trojan warrior spent the next hour and a half checking out the ship's swimming pool, lounge, gym, spa, and arcade, eventually making his way to the upper deck. Looking up at the sky, he saw that it was still night. He looked around, searching for any faint sign of dawn and saw none. "Hmmmm," he thought to himself, "I must have gotten up really early today." He stood there, staring out over the ocean when he heard footsteps behind him.

"Hey Brian," said brave Serestus, "How's it going?"

"Oh, not bad. Not bad at all," said Brian, "So, any ideas for getting out of this mess?"

"Nope," said brave Serestus, "We're just going to have to go with the flow for now and see what happens."

"Yeah, I guess so," said Brian, "Man, the weather seems awfully calm for this time of year."

"Hmmm, yeah, it does," said brave Serestus, "Do you want to head down to the lounge and watch My Little Pony until breakfast?"

"Yeah, sure, why not?" replied Brian, "It'll take my mind of the fact that we're on a mission to kill one of our best friends."

The two of them headed down to the lounge and watched the episodes Swarm of the Century, Stare Master, Baby Cakes, Dragon Quest, Hurricane Fluttershy, and One Bad Apple. At last, brave Serestus leaned back and yawned.

"Ugh," he said, yawning, "Do you think we're ever going to catch up to pius Aeneas at this rate?"

"I sure hope not," said Brian, "Let's go to the gym. I skipped leg day last week and should probably make up for it."

"Sure thing," said brave Serestus. As they passed through the lower deck on the way to the gym, however, Brian suddenly stopped.

"What?" asked brave Serestus, but then he knew. Both looked out on the waters and saw that it was still night.

"That can't be right," said Brian, "What on Earth is going on?"

"Eh, maybe we just got up early…" offered brave Serestus.

"It couldn't have been that early," said Brian. Both stood there, puzzled. The evidence, however, was right in front of them, and both could not doubt their eyes when they saw the same thing. Somehow, it was still night.

"Whatever," said Brian, "Let's go." Both walked down to the gym, where Jake was working out.

"Oh, fancy seeing you here!" said brave Serestus.

Jake didn't reply, too focused on doing his pull ups. Brian walked over to the weights and started messing around with them, and brave Serestus walked over to the treadmills.

"You know what's weird?" said brave Serestus, "The fact that spell check keeps trying to change my name to Sergestus. I mean, how would it know who Sergestus is but not me?"

"Yeah, that is pretty weird," said Jake, taking a break and wiping the sweat off his brow with a towel, "It must be really annoying for the author as well."

The trio spent a half hour or so exercising their muscles before deciding to cool off in the pool. They got into a splash fight with some other soldiers who were relaxing in it. At some point, things got a bit too feisty and the lifeguard had to blow his whistle and break things up. Suddenly, an alarm blared over the intercom, followed by the captain's voice.

"All soldiers assemble on deck. All soldiers assemble on deck," called the captain. Slowly, the soldiers climbed out of the pool and began drying off.

"Ugh," groaned brave Serestus, "It looks like things are about to get serious now." The trio changed back into their clothes and made their way to the upper deck.

"No… way…" said Brian, "No way! There is just no way that this is happening."

It was still night…

The Carthaginian citizens, now soldiers, did their best to assemble into some sort of orderly formation. Suddenly, Anna's voice called out over the silence.

"Attention all! As you know, we have set out on a journey to overtake the fleet of pius Aeneas and sink his big boats. It so happens, however, that the workings of the sea and sky are are such that the minds of mere mortals will never understand fully the mysteries they contain. What man can know for sure the secrets to the mechanism of the stars? Who can predict the path of the planets - chariots of the gods? Who can see into the heart of the solar orb, and reveal its inner will? No man! No man can do this, and for this reason, I ask of you all to keep in mind that no one can ever read the thoughts and minds of the denizens of Olympus. Know this well! And do not, in your arrogance, question the secret causes behind the machinery of the universe."

"Ummm, ooookay, then," said Brian softly, so that only Jake and brave Serestus could hear, "Let me put that more concisely. They're lost, and they have no idea where the heck the sun is."

"Good grief," whispered a random Phoenician soldier who happened to overhear Brian, "Well, we can always turn back right? ...right?"

Before any of the trio could reply, Anna began speaking again. "Each ship is a division. We are the first ship, so therefore, we are the first division. Each division consists of four units. There are two floors of bunks. If you are on the starboard side of the top floor, you are in unit 1. If you are on the port side, you are in unit 2. Starboard of the lower floor is unit 3, and port is 4. Later on, I will give each of you your own unique number as well, but for now, just remember your division and unit number. It's not rocket science."

"Shoot, which side is starboard and which side is port?" asked Jake, "I always get this mixed up."

"Uh, I think I read somewhere that starboard is the right side," said Brian, "Although which side is right depends on which direction you're facing. You know what, I'll call Victor to make sure, since he's a pretty smart guy. Oh, wait, never mind, I left my phone on the ship."

"Dude, you're on the ship right now,' said brave Serestus.

"I meant Aeneas's ship," replied Brian, "Ugh, what a mess. Let's just ask someone when we get back to the bunks."

Slowly, the soldiers, realizing they were in somewhat of a precarious position, began to disperse throughout the ship once more.


	7. A UFO Appears

It had been three days since they set sail. Actually, it might have been four, or even five. Heck, it could have been any number of days, since no one had any way of keeping track of time. The sun had still not risen, and the stars in the night sky were not arranged in any order familiar to the sailors. Polaris, Sirius, Rigel, and all the familiar guiding lights of the heavens could not be found. While this situation may be absolutely mindblowing had it occurred to travellers in modern times, it was accepted by the sailors as being no more surprising or unusual than coming across cyclops inhabiting remote islands, gods intervening in wars, evil sorceresses transforming men into beasts, or Scylla snatching unlucky sailors passing through the Strait of Messina. In this mindset, Brian, Jake, and brave Serestus stood on the deck chatting.

"So, uh, do you think we'll find land before running out of supplies?" asked Brian.

"With our luck, probably not," said brave Serestus.

"No, with Anna's luck, probably not," said Jake, "Hey, do you think the water is drinkable?"

"Why would you think that?" asked Brian.

"Well," replied Jake, "So much has changed from the world we're used to. Heck, it might not even be the same world anymore."

"And just how on Earth would that have happened?" asked brave Serestus.

"Well, it wouldn't have happened on Earth," said Jake, "Or rather, it would have begun on Earth, but ended where we are now."

"I'm afraid I don't follow you," said brave Serestus.

"Look," said Jake, "The time-space continuum is not as stable as some would like to believe. It fluctuates, and even warps. In such cases, two points on the time space continuum will end up closer to each other in hyperspace than they are in physical space. Should a tunnel, known as a wormhole, open up between these two points, then a person, or a whole ship in this case, may move from one of the points to the other without traversing through physical space. Some theoretical physicists speculate that such wormholes may even open up between two distinct time space continuums."

Brian opened his mouth, prepared to make a reply, before freezing. Closing his mouth suddenly and squinting his eyes, he stared into the distance.

"What?" asked Jake.

"I thought I saw movement," said Brian.

"Hmmm," said Jake, "Maybe we've just been looking at the water too…" He stopped speaking and became silent as well, realizing that there did in fact appear to be an object of some sort in the distant horizon flying towards the ship.

"Whoa, what is that?" asked Jake.

"Not sure," said Brian, "It appears to be an unidentified flying object."

"You don't say…" replied Jake, "Hmmm, it seems to have wings. Maybe a plane of some sort?"

"It's flapping them though…" said brave Serestus, "Maybe a large bird?"

"I've never seen a bird that big," replied Brian, "Although it's possible. Pterodactyl maybe?"

"No, wait a second," said Jake, "It's…"

"Magistra?" said Brian, "No, it can't be, oh wait, yes, it's definitely her. What the…?"

"MAGISTRA! MAGISTRA! MAGISTRA!" screamed brave Jake at the top of his lungs.

"Shhhh, she'll hear us," whispered Brian frantically.

"Dude, that's the point!" said Jake, "MAGISTRA! WHAT'S GOING ON WITH ALL THIS CRAZINESS?"

"She's too high up," said Jake. He sighed as Magistra passed overhead, flapping her arms, and disappeared over the horizon.

"Well, what do we do now?" asked Brian.

"Go back to what we were doing before, I guess," said Jake, "Unless you guys want to go take another swim."

"Nah," said brave Serestus, "Man, we really should just go home."

"Yeah but the sailors don't know how to get back to Carthage any more than they know how to reach Aeneas's fleet, or even good old Tyre."

"Or Troy," said Jake, "None of the stars are in the right places. For all we know, they might not even be the same stars. Ugh, I wish none of this would have happened." He was referring not only to being forcibly recruited into a makeshift Carthaginian navy, but to the entire Trojan War itself.

"It would have been nice if at least the north star had been left to us," said Brian.

"Does anyone even know which direction is north?" asked brave Serestus.

"I don't think so," said Brian, "Unlike us Trojans, who rely on GPS for everything, these Carthaginians are used to navigating everything by the stars, which, if you haven't noticed, aren't being very helpful right now. Man, do you guys recognize even one constellation?"

"Nope," said Jake, pointing up ahead, "I thought that one over there kind of resembles Orion though."

"Eh, yeah, I can see where you're coming from," said Brian, "You know what, why don't we just make our own constellations for the new sky?"

"What?" said brave Serestus, "You can't just make up your own constellations."

"You can when you have a whole new uncharted sky to yourself. You just need an image it resembles and a story. Look!" said Brian, pointing between the zenith and the horizon, "There's a rather bright star by itself over there. Lone stars are the easiest because they could be anything. This one happens to be a part of a barn."

"Uh, why a barn?" asked Jake, "And what is a barn doing in the sky?"

"I don't know," replied Brian, "I just felt like making it a barn. As for what it's doing in the sky, that I can answer easily."


	8. The Story of the First Barn

Once upon a time, there existed upon this planet a kingdom called Blobland. The king of that land was as benevolent of a monarch as one could possibly hope for. His taxes were light, and he always applied the money to projects around the kingdom that would benefit the public. Alas, one day, he fell ill, and lying on his death bed, realized at once that he had no heir.

"I must find someone to succeed me," he thought to himself, "But ah, power corrupts too readily. I must find a noble man worthy and responsible enough to take on the task of managing my kingdom without abusing his position.

Realizing this problem, he called his royal adviser to him and asked for his suggestion.

"Well," said the royal advisor, "The vast majority of monarchs in your position would have arranged a jousting tournament and adopted the winner as their son and heir. Let me tell you, however, that it is not great muscular strength or skills in combat that a king needs, but great intelligence and wit. Therefore, arrange an intellectual competition of some sort, and appoint the winner to be your heir."

"Brilliant idea!" said the king. Suddenly, he broke out into a fit of coughing. "Ah, he said, "My time runs short. Distribute fliers throughout the land, telling everyone that anyone wishing to become king must design and create an invention of some sort and bring it here to me. Over the course of the next week or so, I will judge them and proclaim the creator of the one I find most impressive the next king of Blobland."

The king's will was carried out. All the printing presses in the capital city set to work printing throughout the afternoon. During the evening, hundreds of messengers rode throughout the kingdom nailing the fliers up. By morning, everyone in the kingdom had heard of the king's competition.

One of them was a poor peasant boy named Zack, who had spent his whole life working on his father's farm. He had often dreamed of leaving to seek his fortune, but knew his family needed him and that he could not just abandon them. Thus, that day, like every other day, he had awoken at the crack of dawn to go water the corn fields. Passing by the door, he had glanced briefly at the flier nailed to it, taking a moment to read it and admire the fancy border drawn around the text. Immediately after, he crumpled it up and tossed it into the trash. He knew that neither he nor anyone else in the family had the free time needed to work on such a project.

It was Tuesday, the day he always went to gather firewood. And so, after watering the corn, Zack went back to his house, grabbed his lunch box, threw in a peanut butter sandwich, grabbed his ax, and left for the forest. It was a good three hour walk away, and thus, he brought his lunch with him, eating it right before getting to work.

Zack was walking along the road daydreaming about baking cookies on his own personal yacht one day when he heard the sound of an engine behind him. Turning around, he screamed and jumped out of the way as a monster truck nearly ran over him.

"Dude, watch out!" shouted Zack, only to gasp in horror as the monster truck bore down on him again.

This time, instead of jumping out of the way, Zack grabbed the monster truck and began wrestling with it. For nearly an hour, the two of them fought in the middle of the road, throwing and pummeling each other, trying to force the other into submission. At last, Zack managed to armbar the monster truck to the ground, putting it into a painful wrist lock and forcing it to tap out.

"Man, what did you do that for?" asked Zack.

"I was hungry," said the monster truck, "And I wanted to steal your lunch."

"Dude, you could have just asked," said Zack, "I would have been more than willing to give it to you. Here, catch."

Zack tossed his sandwich to the monster truck, who caught it and promptly gulped it down.

"Thanks kiddo," said the monster truck, "I really needed that. You know what, since you've done me a favor, I'll do you a favor too. I'm sure you've heard of the king's competition by now. Go back home, take your barn to the king, and tell him to come inside with you. Don't ask why. Just do it and you'll find yourself in a much better position than before."

"Ummm, ok then," said Zack. He did not completely trust the monster truck, but not wanting to offend it, he turned around and went home. "I'll come back for firewood tomorrow," he thought to himself.

Since gathering firewood was supposed to have taken the whole day, Zack found himself with nothing to do for the afternoon. "Hmmm, maybe I will go pay the king a visit and put the monster truck's claim to the test," he thought to himself. Shrugging his shoulders and realizing he had nothing better to do, he grabbed the barn, hoisted it onto his back, and sprinted to the king's castle, arriving just before sunset. Following the monster truck's instructions, he set the barn down, entered it, and invited the king inside. The king, of course, was suspicious, but deciding Zack looked like a pretty decent guy, decided to trust him and entered the barn.

At once, a large roar filled the room, and both the king and Zack nearly fell to the floor as the barn accelerated upwards. Seconds later, a large crash was heard as the barn broke through the roof and shot into the sky at a sickening speed." The monster truck, it turned out, had been somewhat of an amateur sorcerer and had transformed the barn into a rocket ship."

"Whoa, this is awesome!" shouted the king, trying to make himself heard over the sound of rushing wind.

Zack, somewhat afraid of heights, said nothing at first. A few minute later, when he had gotten used to his situation, he ventured to peak outside the door and was amazed at what he saw. The ground was far below them, and even the largest of buildings looked like grains of sand. Around them floated many homes and villages, all built of clouds. Unfortunately, the barn was rising at too fast a rate to stop and say hi to any of the inhabitants - fairies, gryphons, enormous butterflies, and occasionally a dragon or two.

Zack and the king stood looking out of the open door, enjoying the passing sights and the sensation of the wind raging around them. Eventually, they passed even the highest of the cloud villages. From then on, things began to grow quiet and dark.

"WHAA!" shouted the king as he and Zack were knocked to the ground with a large bang. The barn had evidently crashed into something. Upon looking out the door, they realized it was the sky.

"Oh, well this is great," said Zack sarcastically.

"Actually, it kind of is," said the king, "You know, when you're a king like me, it's nice every once in a while to find some peace and isolation, and you can't get much more peaceful or isolated than being hundreds of miles above everyone else. Trust me, you'll see what I mean when you're king."

"Me? King?" asked Zack, incredulous.

"Of course!" said the king, "You can't possibly imagine that anyone's invention is going to top this one!"

And so, the old king and Zack sat talking through the whole night. The king, having been treated as a royal all his life, listened with great interest to Zack as he told him the story of his life. At last, the conversation ended when Apollo stopped by the next morning in his chariot, wondering why there was a random barn impaled in the sky. The god, after listening to the somewhat bizzare story, brought the king and his heir back down to Blobland. The barn, however, was too big to fit in the chariot, and remains in the sky to this day.


	9. The Story of the Second Barn

Once upon a time, in a small village by the seashore, there was a baseball team named the Giraffes. It was by no means a bad team, however it had not yet made it to the state championships in its entire 30 years of existence. The coach, at this point, had been the same one who had first formed the team and assembled its original members 3 decades ago. Now, paralyzed from his waist down after a bad riding accident, he was too weak to coach, and would be retiring at the end of the season.

The coach, however, had been a great role model for everyone on the team, and all the players desperately wished to give the coach some sort of farewell gift. Of course, nothing was better suited for this purpose than the state championship trophy, and so, throughout that season, the players did their utmost to train hard, and do their very best in every game.

Unfortunately, some teams were just better than others, simply because of the ages of the players. The baseball league of the land, you see, had no age limits, and as a result, it was not uncommon to find a team with a handful of toddlers and senior citizens in the mix. It so happened that all of the adults in the village with the exception of the coach were Latin teachers, which was such a time consuming job that it left no time for even eating or sleeping, let alone playing baseball. As a result, all of the players were schoolchildren.

One of these players was a young girl named Sisi. She was a fast runner, but unfortunately, not a very good hitter. It's not that she would miss the ball. She usually hit it, but would do so at such an angle that the ball would fly high but not far. As a result, it was pretty easy to catch. Whenever the opposing team caught a ball hit by Sisi, which they usually did, she would be "out." I think that's how the game works (Zach, since you used to play baseball, correct me if I'm wrong). In any case, whenever the opponent team failed to catch the ball, Sisi would often get to second or even third base, being as fast of a runner as she was.

Sisi was sick and tired of getting out so often. Her teammates, being nice people, did not criticize her at all, and were quite glad to have such a nice person on their team. Sisi, however, wished she could do more for her teammates. The ninth game of the season had just finished, and Sisi, having gotten out several times, had contributed greatly to her team's loss.

Sisi kicked a rock all the way back to her house, angry and sad. Upon entering her room, her high heels were full of scratches, and she was on the verge of tears.

"You know, maybe if you wore sneakers instead of high heels, you would play better," said her cat to her.

"No, Muffin, it's not running that's a problem for me; it's hitting the ball with the wooden stick thing, whatever it's called. Oh yeah, a bat, that's right. Anyhow, no matter how hard I hit it, it just flies straight up into the air. I don't want to hit high. I want to hit far, but I just can't seem to do it."

"Uh, have you tried hitting at a different angle, instead of just hitting harder," asked Muffin.

"Of course! I've tried everything!" said Sisi, "You know what, I'm just not meant to play baseball. I just don't have the skills or talents needed to win a game for my team. Ugh! I'm just not good enough."

"Well," said Muffin, "If your talents don't lie in hitting a baseball, where do they lie?"

"Oh, the academics," said Sisi, "I've never really been much of a sports person. I like physics, although I don't see how that's going to help. I'm a pretty intelligent, but that's not going to help me hit a ball further since my body just won't listen to me and kind of does its own thing, sending the ball up and not out. Sheesh."

"Someday, somehow, you're going to have to find a way to put that brain of yours to work," replied Muffin, "Don't try to be someone you're not. Use your skills and talents to your advantage. Come on, you can do it."

Sisi sighed and lay down on her bed. As her mind wandered, she was suddenly struck with a flash of insight. "Aha!" she said out loud, "Oh Muffin, you were right! I have an idea!"

Later that afternoon, Sisi snuck into the shed of the Giraffes and stole the baseball to be used for the next game, taking it into her lab and locking the door tightly. A moment later, the lab was ablaze with light and noise as Sisi got to work hammering, sawing, and soldering. Scraps of carbon iron, rubber, and wood went flying in all directions. Inside Sisi's brain, neurons were firing everywhere with superhuman speed as Sisi calculated spring constants, coefficients of friction, changes in potential energy, air resistance, and all sorts of complex integrals and derivatives.

An hour later, she took a deep breath, having finally finished. Her frantic work pace had taxed her mind and body. Still, she found the energy to drag herself back to the team's shed and place the ball back where it was before, in the exact same position.

The next week, the Giraffes were to play their final game against the team of a neighboring village called the Fingernails. The Fingernails were a very fierce team indeed, consisting entirely of grown men, almost as strong as Jake. Still, the Giraffes played well, and at the the twenty sixth inning, they were only two points behind. At that moment, Sisi stepped up to the bat. The rest of the team smiled in encouragement. They knew she would most likely get out, but wished to show their support nonetheless. As you can see, it was a very friendly team.

The opposing team's pitcher laughed when he saw Sisi's high heels, before winding up and throwing the ball full force. Sisi, keeping her eye on the ball, swung her bat and struck it, causing it to fly straight up. A player from the opposing team, with a sneer on his face, immediately ran right under it, prepared to catch it with ease. Suddenly, the ball opened up, transforming into a giant barn.

The whole field was in commotion. The audience clapped, having no idea what was going on but glad to see something unusual. The opposing team all ran away from the barn, not wanting to be crushed under it's massive weight. The Giraffes cheered as Sisi ran around the bases and scored a home run.

Just as she reached home base, the barn landed on the field. Because it was made of rubber it bounced up and went flying into the air once more. Upon passing by the sun, part of the barn's surface began to melt, turning into a thick glue-like substance, causing the barn to stick fast to the sky upon crashing into it.


	10. The Story of the Fire Hydrant

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Victor who lived in a cloud village. In fact, it was one of the higher cloud villages Zack and the king passed on their voyage to space two chapters ago. Victor, however, was not a fairy, or a dragon, or any being endowed with wings. He was a human, and thus, travelled around the village using his solar powered jet pack.

Victor, being a teenager, often liked to hang out with his friends on Friday nights. He soon realized, however, that it was nice to have a little cash on hand in such situations. Thus, Victor decided to get a job as a baker's assistant. And so, showing up to his first day of work, Victor was greeted by his boss, Anakin Skywalker, and given his uniform. Then, he was assigned to a more experienced veteran assistant to begin learning the ways of the baker.

Victor's mentor, Luke, actually happened to be the bakery owner's son, and thus, he was very harsh on Victor, punishing rather cruelly at even the smallest inconsistency of frosting volume on a cake or the addition of an ounce too much flour into the donut batter. Still, the pay was good, and Luke only abused him with words, and not his lightsaber, so it's not really like his life was in danger or anything. Slowly but steadily, over the next month, Victor progressed in his baker training, eventually learning to bake an entire platter of pastries all by himself. From there, he progressed to learning how to write with frosting and make all those neat little flower and balloon designs. One time, a customer requested the words "Happy Birthday Eli" to be written on a cake, however Victor lost the sheet and forgot what exactly he was supposed to write. Knowing he had to put something on it, he decided to try a little abstract art with the cake. Seizing five tubes of frosting in each hand, he drew tons of psychedelic designs on the cake. In the end, it looked as if a unicorn had barfed all over it. When Luke saw the cake, he glared at it suspiciously, but luckily, asked no questions. Suffice to say, Eli's family never ordered from the bakery again.

Several months passed. One day, Victor was out hovering along the road with his jetpack when a fairy girl flew by him before turning around. "Hey, you go to my school!" she said.

"Really?" asked Victor, "I don't think I've ever seen you before."

"Probably because you haven't," said the fairy girl, "I lied. I don't actually go to your school. I'm just a figment of your imagination." Having said this, the girl vanished. Victor stood there blinking, wonder what had just happened. A moment later, he woke up.

"Oh, crap!" said Victor, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, "I'm late, I'm late late late. Oh my goodness, Luke is going to kill me." Somehow, he had slept through his alarm clock - probably because he had stayed up until 3 a.m. the night before playing checkers with Nicholas Cage.

Victor hopped out of bed, put his clothes on, grabbed his jetpack, and leapt out the door, putting his jetpack on mid-leap. Then, flying so fast his ears almost melted, he reached the Skywalker Bakery at last, fifteen minutes late.

Suffice to say, neither Luke nor Anakin were very happy. "Well, well, well," said Luke, "It seems we put more trust in you than you deserved. It looks like you don't care so much about the welfare of this business after all, eh? Hmmm, do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Victor, knowing that back talking to Luke would be the worst thing to do at the moment, simply shook his head no.

"We have every right to fire you," said Luke, "But because we just fired two assistants last week for accidentally vaporising one of the ovens, we will have to keep you for now. Unfortunately for you, we have decided to demote you to punish you in some way. Perhaps in a year or so, you can regain your former position."

And so, Victor went from an assistant baker to a delivery boy. Every Saturday, he would fly around town with a stack of cakes, delivering them to various children's birthday parties. One day, however, the bakery of a neighboring village fell through the clouds and shattered upon crashing into the ground. As it turned out, unbeknownst to the owners, ice had been accumulating under it, causing it to grow too heavy for the clouds to support. Thus, the Skywalker Bakery was suddenly inundated with calls from this neighboring village as well, and soon, Victor found him traversing vast expanses of the sky to deliver its denizens their baked goods. He was chosen for this task because his jetpack was quicker than any fairy could fly. Still, the flight usually took around an hour and a half, depending on weather conditions.

One day, a month or so later, Victor was carrying a box of donuts to the neighboring village. Due to the fact that he was flying against the wind, the journey took an incredibly long time, and long after sunset, he was still only halfway to the neighboring village. Suddenly, a meteor flashed through the air, grazing the box of donuts as it plummeted toward the ground. Immediately, the box of donuts burst into flames.

"Oh no!" said Victor, "Now I'll be fired for sure. HELP! HELP!"

A shiny moving light in the distance halted before turning its path toward Victor and moving toward him at a brisk pace. As it got closer, Victor realized it was Diana.

"What's wrong?" shouted Diana from afar.

"This box of donuts is on fire!" shouted Victor back.

"Oh dear," thought Diana to herself, "That's a problem." Immediately, the goddess nose dived downward, flying her chariot at Mach 6 to the sea. Leaning out of the chariot, she filled a bucket with water before flying upwards again and pouring it on the flaming box. Unfortunately, one donut was still on fire, so Diana made a second trip to the ocean, filled the bucket up with water again, and put out the last fiery donut. You can only imagine the confusion of those watching as the moon oscillated between the land and sky.

"Whew," said Victor, "Thanks! You saved my donuts!"

"You're welcome," said Diana, "I hope the people who ordered them don't mind if they're slightly darker and more crispy than expected. But man, that's a long trip to the ocean. We need some easier method of obtaining water in case that ever happens again."

"Oh yeah, definitely," said Victor, "But how would we do that?"

"Oh, easy," said Diana, "I'll just talk to my dad and he'll do something about it."

And so, Diana talked to Jupiter, who ordered a fire hydrant to be installed in the sky above that area in case any donut boxes passing by the area happened to catch on fire again for one reason or another.


	11. The Story of the Refrigerator

Once upon a time, a young couple was walking along the river in a forest under the brilliant light of a full moon. The woman's name was Avada and the man's name was Kedavra. They had known each other since preschool, but not really known each other until they had been placed in an arranged marriage with each other. Now, realising they would have to put up with each other for the rest of their lives, they were desperate to find something each had in common with each other.

"Say, Avada," said Kedavra, "I didn't know you liked to play Bingo as well."

"Oh my goodness, I love Bingo!" said Avada, "We should totally get together and play it sometime."

"O, Kedavra!" said Avada, "Of course we should. I'm sure we'll have tons of opportunities considering I have to get married to you. Uhhh, do you by any chance enjoy…" She stopped as the sound of a crying baby rang out through the thick undergrowth.

"Whoa," said Kedavra, "What on Mars?"

"Oh, we're on Mars?" asked Avada.

"No, I have no idea which planet we're on," replied Kedavra, "But it's definitely not Earth." He began moving toward the sound, which continued ceaselessly. Upon arriving at the source of the crying, they found a baby - a human baby to be exact.

"Hmph," said Kedavra, "That's odd. What should we do with it?"

"I dunno," said Avada, "Eh, maybe keep it? I mean, we can't just leave it here. It might get eaten by goats."

"True, quite true," said Avada, "We'll take it back with us until we find the owner. Man, how irresponsible of a parent do you have to be to accidentally lose your baby in the middle of a forest?"

And so, Avada and Kedavra took the baby home and tried to look for its parents. They called the police, who said no one had contacted them reporting a missing baby. They asked around for anyone who might recognize it. No one did. And so, they ended up keeping and raising the baby, which they named Eli, as their own.

One day, Eli was out jogging with his school's track team when he saw a bird, stopping to watch it fly from branch to branch. This was not unusual for him. He had always been fascinated by flying creatures, from the butterflies that flew lightly between flowers, to the strange flashes of light that could be seen in the sky above on certain days, if one payed close attention. Unbeknownst to Eli, they were sunlight reflecting off the scales of dragons.

"Come on Eli! Get moving!" shouted the coach.

Eli began jogging again, but once his mind had turned to the subject of flight, he wouldn't be thinking of anything else for a while. The truth was he just didn't feel like he belonged on the ground. On the land, he never felt quite at home.

Later that day, he ran into Sisi in the halls. "Hey Sisi," said Eli, "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing much," said Eli, "I'm just contemplating the fact that the ground seems kind of boring these days and I'd love to see what's above it."

"Clouds," said Sisi, "And air. Lots of it. It's probably quite windy too."

"Ah, wind," replied Eli, as his heart burned with an unnamable but strong emotion. He had always loved the wind and the feeling it gave as it brushed past him. It gave him a sense of freedom - of becoming one with a force not bound by the law of gravity. A force free to travel through the skies and see the world.

"You know," said Eli, "I've always wondered how wind works.

"Oh, it's funny you say that," said Sisi, "Top secret government papers were leaked last week revealing the secret. Apparently, hot air rises and cool air sinks. That's all there is to it. The atmosphere is heated differently due to different amounts and angles of sunlight. Therefore, the warmer regions rise up, cool down, and sink.

"WOW!" said Eli, "That is absolutely mind blowing! Shame on the government for keeping so many secrets from us. I wonder what else they know."

"Yeah," replied Sisi, "They probably know how volcanoes work too."

Later that evening, Eli sat in his room pondering this new piece of information Sisi had alerted him to. "Hot air rises," thought Eli to himself, "Hmmmm." Suddenly, he had an idea. He ran down to the first floor and took all the food and cold air out of the refrigerator. Then, he microwaved a bunch of air to heat it up. Next, he shoved as much of the heated up air as he could fit into the refrigerator before bringing it out the back door. Finally, he laid the refrigerator down on the lawn and sat upon it. Just as he predicted, it began to rise up.

"THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER!" shouted Eli as he rose higher and higher. Soon, he could see his school, the library, the entire town, and even the entire state. As he sat there staring down at the ground, ecstatic that he was finally free of it for once, he heard the sound of children laughing. Looking up, his jaw dropped as he saw his first cloud village. A group of fairy children were playing hopscotch near the border. Suddenly, one of them caught sight of Eli and stared. Her friends, wondering what she was looking at turned around, and were shocked when they saw Eli rising up on a flying refrigerator.

"Hey," said Eli nervously, waving. Unfortunately, the act of waving caused the refrigerator to rock back and forth. In his effort to stabilize himself, Eli fell off.

"AAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHH!" screamed Eli, furious that he was returning to the ground. Suddenly, he felt his fall broken as several small hands seized him. The fairy girls had rushed after him, realizing that he was in trouble, and caught him. The were now lifting him up, planning to show him to the rest of their friends. As they flew closer to their village, they laughed hysterically, delighted at what they had found.

In this way, Eli was given a tour of the village as the fairy girls showed him to all of their acquaintances. Most of the older villagers had heard of a human before, but never seen one. Even after seeing Eli, they still technically hadn't seen a human because as it turned out, Eli wasn't a human. He was a fairy boy all along. When he was a baby, he was kidnapped by an evil sylph who was chased to the ground by the policefairies of the village of Eli's birth. The policefairies chased the sylph down to the ground, where she cast a spell on the young fairy boy to transform him into a human boy and hid him in a forest. Later, after the police lost her trail, she returned to where she had hid the baby but could not find it.

All this, Eli figured out after living in the village for some time when a traveler from another village recognized his face as being quite similar to one of his friend's, who turned out to be Eli's real father.

Meanwhile, Avada and Kedavra's refrigerator had just kept on rising until it reached the sky and could go no higher.


	12. The Story of the Pogo Stick

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Abbey who worked at Area 51. Her job was to reverse engineer crashed flying saucers that had been found and recovered around the world.

She had originally been a very well known professor of quantum physics at Princeton, before being hired by the U.S. Air Force to work at the top secret air base out in the Nevada desert. Through her years there, she had seen many strange sights, and was often asked to explain how they worked. She had pieced together countless anti gravity devices, teleportation gates, and laser guns, all retrieved from the wreckages of extraterrestrial aircraft.

One day, Abbey sat upon a bench examining a strange golden cube. It had been found in an underwater pyramid by a group of Navy SEALS who had been training off the coast of Oahu. A more experienced team had been sent down later to investigate the area more, but had vanished. Now, in her underground work area, Abbey shuddered as she held the creepy object.

Suddenly, her boss Kayla walked in. "Hey Abbey," said Kayla, "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing much," said Abbey, "I'm just examining this new arrival here. Tests done with the mass spectrometer have revealed that the metal coating is not gold, as we previously thought. Unfortunately, we can not pinpoint exactly where on the periodic table it is. Fortunately, however, the lab has also assured us that it is not radioactive.

"Well that's quite dandy," said Kayla, "Hey, don't you think the Washington Redskins have like the most offensive name in history?"

"Uhhhh, what does that have to do with anything?" asked Abbey.

"It doesn't," said Kayla, "But it just popped into my mind."

"Ok then," said Abbey, "Well, I'm thinking of running it through the magnetron X-ray later to identify its internal composition."

"Oh, sorry, I thought you had heard. It's broken," replied Kayla.

"What?!" exclaimed Abbey, "Well, alright then. I guess I'll have to wait. In the meantime, there's not much more I can do with this thing."

"Have you tried poking it with a stick?" asked Kayla.

"Uhh, no, I hadn't thought of that," said Abbey, "Hmmm, let me see. Ah, I have a ruler. This should have to do for now." Picking up her ruler, Abbey began stabbing the golden cube. A moment later, the cube opened.

"Whoa!" said Abbey, "It's a box… Who would have thought?"

"What… What is that thing?" asked Kayla. She referred not to the golden box itself, but to its contents - a crystal ear, about the size of a pineapple.

Kayla's eyes were wide. "Well, uh, have fun examining that thing…" she said, before walking out the door.

Abbey, for her part, had no idea what to make of the glimmering object. Instead, she sat staring at it, marvelling at the fine craftsmanship of whatever ancient civilization had crafted it. As she gazed into the ear, past the surface and into it's very essence, she felt almost as if her consciousness was being absorbed into it. Her vision around the skull grew dimmer as the skull itself seemed to grow brighter in her eyes. Her heart started pumping as a sudden inexplicable wave of fear swept swept over her, paralyzing her. She could move neither her eyes nor head, trapped into staring ever more intently at the crystal ear, now pulsating with light.

Suddenly, a series of intense visions struck her. She saw armies clashing, making use of all sorts of horrible futuristic technology. She saw an enormous creature, tentacled and monstrous, but clearly intelligent, sitting on a throne and giving out orders to similar creatures which seemed to be of high rank. She saw maids milking cows shaped like teapots, and then using the milk in bizarre alchemical concoctions designed to awaken the power of the ear. She saw strange cities full of buildings designed using non-Euclidean geometry, and watched as they burned, destroyed by the dark astral currents set in motion by stimulating the crystal ear. She saw Rapunzel, wielding a frying pan in one hand and a katana in the other, defending the crystal ear, fending off an entire army of pink clonetroopers. She saw grown men weeping, and grizzly bears mauling their own mates in an effort to learn the location of the crystal ear.

"Wow, whatever this thing is, it's pretty messed up, and in the interest of preserving my sanity, I think I'm going to get rid of it," said Abbey aloud, "See, look! I'm already talking to myself. The longer I keep this thing, the sooner I'll become as crazy as that guy who sits in front of Jake. Woe is me!"

Immediately, she hatched a plan to be rid of the cursed object. She began by telling Kayla about the visions, causing her to agree full heartedly with the plan to be rid of the creepy ear. They planned to sneak it into the Soviet Union, hoping the KGB would find it, and be driven insane as a result of experimenting with it. It was clear to Abbey from her brief experience that the ear possessed a vast deal of dark power, and that its function and purpose were incomprehensible to humans at their present stage of evolution. Any tampering with the thing was just asking for trouble.

Abbey's plan was to simply drop the skull into Soviet territory and wait for someone to find it. Unfortunately, they could not use a conventional airplane for this task, thanks to the Soviet's radar system. After some thought, they decided that a hot air balloon was the best choice. Kayla had wanted to take the company ornithopter, but Abbey had refused because it didn't have air conditioning.

As they were were flying over Harrisburg, however, they got caught in a strong wind that blew them off course to Brazil. Along the way, the balloon was attacked by peregrine falcons, resulting in a large rip. In this way, Abbey and Kayla found themselves sinking at a perilous rate.

"Oh no!" shouted Abbey, "The basket's too heavy! What should we do?"

"Make it lighter. Throw stuff overboard!" shouted Kayla.

The only thing they could find on the basket besides themselves was a giant three ton pogo stick, which they somehow managed to roll to the side of the basket and fling over the edge, causing it to get stuck in the sky before it could make its way down.


	13. Brian Explains Calculus

Having finished the story of the Pogo Stick, Brian searched the sky, looking for another cluster of stars to turn into a constellation. Spying a semi circle consisting of five stars, he began to speak. This time, he only got as far as "Once upon…" when a loud cry of "Land Ho!" rang out from the ship's lookout. The next moment, there was a great bustling about below deck as everyone rushed out to verify the claim with their own eyes. Considering how long they had been at sea, the lookout may have just been delusional. Upon realizing there was in fact land in sight, Anna ordered all men of units 2 and 4 to return to their bunks and arm themselves. Thus, Jake and brave Serestus would have to wait a while before hearing the story of Magistra's Car Tire, and so will you.

Fifteen minutes later, the two units were rowing toward, determined to hunt what they could and replenish the ships' food supplies.

"Ugh, man, I should have worked out more on the rowing machine," said Brian.

"Well, you'll have plenty of time to do that once we're back on board the ship," said brave Serestus.

"You know, I'm really tempted to just get out and swim the whole way,' said Jake, "Especially at this rate."

"You're more than free to do so," replied Brian.

"Nah," said Jake, "There could be sharks down there."

"Or jellyfish," said brave Serestus, shuddering.

They rowed in silence the rest of the way before beaching the boat and stepping out on shore. They appeared to be on a large island of some sort. The soft sand gleamed like snow in the moonlight, and the forested area beyond the beach looked ominous.

"Alright everyone!" shouted Anna, "Let's get moving. Onward!" And so, the two units of Carthaginian soldiers began marching inland. A minute after entering the forest, they all had their swords out, and were hacking away furiously at all the vines and brambles that stood in their way.

"Ugh! What are we even looking for?" asked brave Serestus

"Dinner," said Brian, "Just kill something. Anything."

"What if it's, like, a venomous snake or something," asked brave Serestus.

"Oh I don't mind snake meat," replied Brian, "As long as it's well cooked."

The vines grew thicker and thicker. They were practically in complete darkness, now that the leaves overhead blocked out the light of the moon and the stars. For a fraction of a second, a star from the Refrigerator shone through an opening in the canopy before blinking out of view once more.

"Well then," said Jake, "Clearly we're the first people to ever go through here."

"How do you know?" asked Brian.

"Ummm, because if someone else had gone before us, we wouldn't have to clear a path…" replied Jake.

"Well, maybe someone really small passed through - so small, in fact, that they could easily make their way through all this without cutting a path?"

"Dude," said Jake, "What's the probability of someone being born that small?"

"How small do you think they would have to be?" asked Brian.

"As small as a mouse at least," said Jake, "Let's say three inches tall."

"The probability of someone being that small is precisely zero," said Brian.

"See, I told you!" replied Jake.

"Ask me the probability of someone being five and a half feet tall," said Brian.

"Ummmm, why?" asked Jake.

"Because it's zero as well," replied Brian.

"What?! No it's not," said Jake, "I know lots of people that are five and a half feet tall."

"Actually, no you don't," said Brian, "Let me explain. It might be hard to follow me in the beginning, but in the end, everything will make perfect sense. The first thing you must understand is the concept of a limit. A limit is the value a function approaches in the vicinity of a certain x value. Sometimes, this is easy to find. For example, in any continuous function, you can find the limit of an x value by plugging it into the function itself. Obviously, as the x value approaches the target value, the y value is going to approach the value of y at the target value of x. With other functions, however, finding a limit is a little bit harder. Some functions, for example, would be continuous if it weren't for the presence of a hole in the graph. To find the limit of functions like this at the value of the hole, factor the numerator and denominator and cancel out the shared factor before plugging in the x value. A derivative is the slope of the tangent line to a curve at a specific point. Start with two other points on both sides of the point in question and measure the slope of the line connecting them. Then, find the limit as these two points grow closer and closer to each other."

"Whoa whoa whoa," said Jake, "I thought a derivative was an English word that came from a Latin word. For example, computer is a derivative of puto, putare, putavi, putatus."

"It doesn't surprise me that of all the Latin derivatives we learned, you would pick that one," said Brian, "But no, that's a different type of derivative. Don't get them mixed up. Latin and calculus are very different subjects. Let's see, where was I? Oh, yes, ok, so there are a number of ways to find the derivative at a point. For example, with polynomials, you subtract 1 from the exponent of each term and multiple the coefficient by the former exponent. There are other more advanced methods, but I'm not going to get into all that right now because you don't need to know any of it in that much detail for now. Oh, also, there's something called the chain rule. It states that no more than five chainsaw factories can remain in a city at the same time before supply exceeds demand. Anyhow, while a derivative is the slope of the tangent line at a point, an integral is the area under a curve between two bounds. It is found by subtracting the resulting value when the lower bound is plugged into the anti-derivative of a function from the value when the upper bound is plugged in. An anti-derivative of a function is the function that results when the original function is run through the derivation process backwards. If you take the derivative of the anti-derivative, you end up with the original function. The spread of biological data is usually modeled after the normal curve, and heights are no exception. Therefore, using the normal curve, one can find the probability that a person's height falls within a certain range. "If you want to find the probability that a person's height equals a specific value, however, you would find that the two bounds are identical to each other. Therefore, the probability is equal to the area under a single point, which is zero, because the area would consist of a single line segment which possesses length but not width."

"Wow!" said Jake, "I did not know any of that. Say, where did everyone go?"

Brain and brave Serestus looked around and realized that while Brian had been lecturing about calculus, the rest of the Carthaginians had pressed on and had left them behind long ago. Now that Brian was no longer speaking, they could hear nothing but silence, and see nothing but darkness. They were alone, with no clue how to make their way to the rest of the hunting party, or back to the boats.


	14. How Not to Get Lost

"Ah, finally!" said Jake, looking around.

"Yes," said Brian, "We're finally so lost we'll probably never get back to the boats."

"No, I meant we're finally out of the forest," said Jake. After an hour or so of hacking through bushes and vines, they had finally reached what appeared to be a clearing. Before them, enormous structures loomed ominously - dark shadows painted on the eternal night sky.

"Whoa," said brave Serestus, "What is going on?"

"It seems to be some sort of city," said Jake, squinting.

"Or rather, what used to be some sort of city," replied Brian. The rustle of the wind in the leaves suddenly sounded much creepier as they looked at the abandoned ruins.

"Yeah, let's turn back then," said Jake, "I doubt there's anyone here who can help us. We need to find where we got separated and retrace our steps."

"Are you kidding me?" asked brave Serestus, "This is awesome! Let's go explore."

"Whoa whoa whoa," said Jake, "Seriously! we need to get back to the boats if we don't want to be left behind. For all we know, maybe they decided they weren't going to find any game here and are rowing to the ship this very moment?"

"In all honesty," replied brave Serestus, "They probably won't have any easier of a time getting back than we will. Come on!"

And so, the trio spent the next few hours wandering around the ancient city. The buildings were all of stone, and many were shaped like pyramids. Often, parts contained strange inscriptions or engravings. The longer they remained, the more uneasy they felt. Finally, even brave Serestus felt like leaving.

"Ok, let's get out of here," he said to Jake, "It all appears to be the same. More and more stone buildings. If you've seen one, you've seen them all. Let's go. Say, where's Brian?"

"What the…" stammered Jake, watching as Brian, having run down the street without the other two noticing, disappeared into one of the giant stone pyramids.

"Ok, he's gone mad," brave Serestus, running after him. "BRIAN! BRIAN!" he shouted.

Jake followed close behind. Both hesitated momentarily on the threshold before entering cautiously.

"I can't see," whispered brave Serestus.

"Hold on a sec, my iPhone has a flashlight app," said Jake. A moment later, he had activated it and directed the light in front of them. The were standing at the end of a narrow corridor. Listening closely, they could hear the faint sound of Brian's footsteps echoing in the distance.

"Ugh, ok, come on," said brave Serestus. Both began jogging down the corridor. For five minutes or so, they chased Brian, before finally finding him stopped in the center of a large hall, upon which was a table that seemed to be made of gold. Unbeknownest to the trio, it was in fact orichalcum - a metal known for it's resistance to magical manipulation. Engraved on the metal were countless occult designs. Just looking at it sent shivers down Jake's spine. Upon three of the corners was embedded a different jewel - a diamond, a sapphire, and a ruby. The fourth corner contained an indentation, where a jewel had clearly once been. On the center of the table was a note, written on what was clearly a very old piece of papyrus.

"Ok, Brian, what the heck is wrong with you?" asked Jake.

"I don't know," said Brian, "I thought I smelled chocolate and just followed my nose. Somehow, I ended up here, but I don't smell it anymore."

"What?" asked Jake, "I can't tell if you're being serious or not. We're in a creepy abandoned city, you randomly think you smell chocolate, and the first thing you do is run after it? Are you ok?"

"I might be," said Brian, "But is Brian?" Upon saying this, "Brian" gave a sinister grin and vanished, leaving the two of them blinking their eyes. Jake was terrified. Brave Serestus was feeling slightly less brave than usual. Suddenly, they heard the sound of approaching footsteps and instinctively drew their swords and turned to face the door, holding their breath as they waited.

A figure entered, panting. Upon focusing the flashlight app on it, they realized it was Brian.

"Guys, what they heck?" said Brian, "Guys? Guys? What's wrong." He noticed the baffled expression on the faces of his two friends.

"Ummm, where were you?" asked Jake.

"Well," began Brian, "I stopped briefly to examine a neat looking design etched on the wall of one of the buildings while you two wandered up ahead. Then, the next thing I knew, you two were shouting my name and sprinting toward this building. I was so confused, but followed you, and now, here I am…"

Jake and brave Serestus glanced at each other, unsure how to react. They had no doubt that Brian told the truth.

"But… but who was that?" asked Jake. Brave Serestus just shrugged his shoulders.

"Who was what?" asked Brian, walking towards them, and examining the table. "Whoa, what's this?"

"I don't know," said Jake, "What does it say?" He was referring to the note placed neatly at the center of the table.

"Do you think I can read that?" asked Brian.

"Wait a moment, I have the google translate app," said Jake, "Let me scan it."

The room grew darker as Jake switched from the flashlight app to the google translate app and scanned the piece of papyrus. The app identified the writing as Linear B, and translated it as follows,

"The account given by Sister Orchid was not entirely correct. This city is no longer the guardian of Heartache, having failed to save itself from that which they sought to protect. A more powerful kingdom now holds it, although I have not identified which one. It should not take long. Search for and recover Acid. I will await you before the gates of Uranus.

-Brother Lemonade"


	15. Anna Makes Some Friends

Brian, Jake, and brave Serestus were on lookout duty, placed there as punishment for getting lost and holding back the hunting party. Anna had sent out a search party to find them, however they had come back by themselves while the search party had gotten lost. As a result the queen ended up sending out another search party to find the first search party, but then that one got lost too. In the end, it had been a huge mess and it was a miracle that they had not had to abandon anyone. Then again, they did have the entirety of an eternal night to find everyone.

"Well, that went well," said Brian, "What are we even looking out for?"

"More land," replied Jake, "Or Aeneas's fleet so we can finally join up with them again."

"Man, I wish we really did find Aeneas again," said brave Serestus, "It would be nice seeing everyone again - Antheus, Mnestheus, Capys, Orontes, oh wait, he died in that storm."

"For their sake, I hope we don't ever see them again," said Brian.

"What do you mean?" asked brave Serestus.

"I mean I don't want them to be stuck forever in an endless night like we are," said Brian, "He's probably reached Italy by now. Boy, I can just see him already building the walls of his new city, while here we are sailing with a Carthaginian fleet to Jupiter knows where."

They stood in silence, looking at out over the vast expanse of sea before them, trying their best to enjoy the cool night air and the feeling of a gentle breeze blowing across their skin.

"Hey, do you see that?" asked brave Serestus.

"What?" asked Brian, "Oh, wait, what is that?"

All three of them stood looking at an abstract shaped object far off in the distance.

"An island maybe?" suggested Jake, "Well, if it is, we certainly won't get lost on it."

"No, said brave Serestus, "It can't be. It's too small."

"Should we tell Anna?" asked Brian.

"Yeah, probably," said Jake, "It wouldn't hurt."

A minute later, Anna stood on the crows nest with them, peering at the distant object through a pair of binoculars.

"It's a sail," she said at last, "Some ship must have been destroyed in a storm earlier. I suppose that's both good and bad news. Good news because it means there are other sentient beings out here who might be able to tell us where we are, should be meet them. Bad news because we might also suffer the same fate, but then again, Carthaginian boats are among the sturdiest in the world, and the Phoenician people are known for their expertise in sailing.

"I hope it's a Greek ship," said Jake, "Maybe even that of good old Ulysses."

Anna gave Jake a queer look, causing him to realize that while wishing for Greek ships to be destroyed in storms was a perfectly natural thing to do when speaking to Trojans, this was not the case with Carthaginians.

"You know," said Anna, "Now that you mention it, I do wonder which nation the ship belonged to. I'll tell the navigator to turn towards it."

Fifteen minutes later, the ship was as close as possible to the object - close enough, in fact, to see that it was not a sail at all, but the tattered remnants of a hot air balloon. In the basket sat two figures, screaming. Although the wind was too strong to hear what they were saying, they were undoubtedly calling for help.

"Oh my goodness!" exclaimed Anna, "Come on!" She climbed down from the crows nest and leapt into a boat, with Brian, Jake, and brave Serestus trailing close behind. The crewmen on deck lowered them down, and as soon as the boat touched the sea, Brian and Anna each grabbed an oar and began rowing toward the wreckage as fast as they could.

"Hey, are you guys alright?" shouted Anna to the people in the basket, "Here, come on in. She stood up and helped the them climb from the basket into the boat.

"Thanks," said one of them, "And hi Jake, what are you doing here?"

"Whoa Kayla? Abbey? What the heck?" said Jake, astounded.

"You know these two?" Anna asked Jake.

"Yeah," said Jake, "I… uhhhh…. sold my truck to them on eBay a few weeks ago…"

It was a complete lie, of course, but Jake did not want to reveal too much about his real identity, considering he was supposed to be a member of the fleet the Carthaginian fleet was currently trying to hunt and destroy. Abbey, thinking Jake was just being weird as usual, rolled her eyes.

"So, uh, how did you two end up here?" asked Anna, clearly pleased to find someone of her own gender to talk to. Sailing for a week while trying to control a bunch of rowdy Carthaginian men had really put a strain on her nervous system.

"Well, you see," began Kayla, "I was just minding my own business here, when Abbey had to go on and open up a box which contained... OW! What was that for?"

"Oh, sorry, I was just getting into a more comfortable position," said Abbey, who had just elbowed Kayla very hard in the ribs. Kayla, however, got the message - namely that Abbey did not want anyone to know of the crystal ear she kept concealed in her purse at the moment.

"And, inside the box was uhhhh… a winning lottery ticket," continued Kayla, "So she used the money to go on a hot air balloon ride, and uh, my job is a hot air balloon driver and somehow along the way, there was… Ummm, well, we kind of crash landed in Brazil. It's a long story. But anyhow, we manage to repair the balloon and fly again. In the midst of the Atlantic Ocean, we ran into a storm. While trying to fly over it, we somehow found ourselves in an enormous spinning tunnel of clouds. We floated along inside of it, wondering how we would ever get out, before seeing an opening. Immediately, we flew through it, and were surprised to find that somehow, it was night. Shortly afterward, the balloon ran out of fuel and we crash landed into the ocean. We've had been floating around for maybe three hours or so before you guys arrived."

"Oh, wow," said Anna. Being an intelligent person, she had actually done a decent job of following along with Kayla's rambling. "Well, in any case," she continued, "We're all glad to have you on board. Unfortunately, we have no idea where exactly we are or what is going on with everything, but still, it should be nice to sleep on a warm bed instead of that balloon basket and eat."

"Oh yeah, that would be great!" said Kayla, "Especially after going through the jetstream. It almost felt like we were flying over the Arctic. I hope I don't sleep too long though. I can't wait to see an ocean sunrise!"

Brain, Jake, brave Serestus, and Anna just stared at each other.

"What?" asked Kayla.

"Oh, right, you've only been here for three hours," said Brian, "Uh, let's just say all of us can't wait to see an ocean sunrise…"


	16. A Most Unnatural Storm

"ALL CREWMEN ON DECK! ALL CREWMEN ON DECK!" shouted the captain over the intercom.

Jake grunted and rolled over, nearly falling onto the floor. His daily schedule had grown relatively fixed by now. In the morning, he would wake up late, eat breakfast, and then meet Brian and Jake at the pool or gym. After working out, he would eat lunch in the dining hall, before going back to his room to take his daily afternoon nap. It was from this nap that he was so abruptly awakened by the sound of the captain's voice.

"Ugh, what is going on?" he muttered.

"Not sure," replied Brian, jumping down from the top bunk. He had been working on that week's Latin worksheet and had spent the last five hours trying to find the gender, number, and case of the word "qui."

Jake sat up and looked around, squinting. "Where's brave Serestus?" he asked.

"I think he's at the movie theater watching the new Teletubbies movie," replied Brian, "I'm going up on deck."

"Wait, we have to?" asked Jake, "I thought he just said crewmen."

"Yeah, he did," replied Brian, "But I want to see what's going on. Plus, I need to stretch my legs after cross legged on my bed for so long. Do you have any idea how hard it is to do Latin homework without an internet connection?"

He was answered by the sound of Jake snoring. Grabbing a hoody and putting it on, he walked out the door and headed up the steps.

Upon entering the deck, he peered out over the ocean and stared in awe at the sight of an enormous thunderstorm in the distance. It's clouds, darker than a void, caused the star-studded night sky around it to look bright in comparison. Crewmen all around were bustling to and fro, trimming the sails and adjusting the angle of the mast to turn the ship away from the storm. As Brian looked around the sea, he saw the crewmen of the other ships in the fleet doing the same. In unison, the armada turned left and began fleeing.

Meanwhile, in her room, Abbey was typing away at her laptop, working on a novel she was writing. She had been working on it for the past year or so, and had planned to send the finished draft to a publisher by the end of the month. It was a rather bizarre science fiction novel where the protagonist was an SAT practice book and the main antagonist was McDonalds. As she began writing the epilogue, a buzzing sound came from her purse.

"Oh, that's weird," said Abbey, "I don't remember putting my phone on vibrate." She grabbed her purse, opened it, and dropped it on the floor as she leapt back in terror. As the purse landed, a tube of chapstick rolled out, followed by the crystal ear, which was glowing, vibrating, and humming.

Abbey's face turned pale as she looked at the now clearly enchanted object, pulsating with light and power. "Whoa," she said out loud. A moment later, she ran out the room calling for Kayla, running into Anna on the way.

"Hey!" said Anna, "Did you have a good night?"

"Oh, heh, yeah, I sure did," replied Abbey. Before she could say anything further, a series of loud banging and crackling sounds came from her room, causing Anna's eyes to grow wide.

Abbey groaned and ran back, followed by the Carthaginian queen. Upon entering the room, they saw the room ablaze as the ear, its humming now sounding more like screeching, flashed with green and purple light.

Brian, throughout all this, had remained on deck, choosing to give the crewmen a hand as they struggled to increase the ship's velocity. Looking back, the hairs on his neck stood on end as he saw the clouds flash with green and purple lightning.

"That doesn't look natural," he thought to himself.

He stood there for the next few minutes as the ship, followed by the others in the fleet, raced toward the direction of the Second Barn. As they fell into a steady pace, he tried to teach the sailors calculus, but unfortunately, none of them could quite grasp anything he said. Giving up, he leaned against a wall, too lazy to go below deck.

Closing his eyes after a few minutes and listening to the sound of the waves and wind, he had nearly fallen asleep when he heard the blare of a horn from one of the other ships.

"What is it now?" asked one of the sailors.

The horn blared again from that ship as its mast was lowered and it came to a standstill.

"Are they nuts?" asked another sailor next to Brian, "What are they doing?" As he finished speaking, another ship blasted its horn, and then another.

"LOWER THE SAIL!" screamed the lookout. The sailors by the main mast obeyed, driven by the urgent sound of the lookout's voice.

"Oh," said Brian, toward the ship's front, "Oh my…" Everyone had been too busy watching the ominous flashing clouds behind them to notice that the horizon before them seemed to be growing nearer and nearer.

"A waterfall," gasped one of the sailors.

"No," said Brian, looking at its sides, "It's a whirlpool, and a massive one at that. Looks like we're going to have to brave the storm after all."

"Nope," replied the captain, walking up behind them with a weary but grim expression on his face. "It's too late for that. Much too late. We're being pulled in."

Everyone on deck stood motionless with fear as the ship slowly glided toward the watery abyss.


	17. Into the Spiral

"Well Kayla, it was nice meeting you."

Kayla opened her eyes and saw Anna standing over her. She hadn't actually been sleeping - just relaxing and listening to music while waiting for dinner. Sitting up, she pulled her earbuds out of her ears. "Huh, what?" she asked.

"Did you hear the announcement?" asked Anna.

"No," replied Kayla, "What happened?"

"The ship is being pulled into a vast whirlpool. No one is to be on deck until, well, I don't know." replied Anna.

At first, Kayla thought Anna was pulling her leg, but upon seeing the solemn expression in Anna's eyes, realized she was serious.

"Oh…" said Kayla, "Ummm, where's Abbey?"

"I don't know," said Anna, "There was a thing - a crystal. It was glowing, and she grabbed it and ran off. Considering how panicked she looked, I didn't try to follow her, or ask what was going on."

At that moment, Abbey entered the room, out of breath. "I tried to throw it overboard," she said. She was about to say more, but then saw Anna in the room.

"Tried?" asked Kayla, "What happened?"

"All the gates to the deck were locked, and they wouldn't let me out," replied Abbey.

"Yeah, the ship is relatively watertight," said Anna, "After being sucked into the whirlpool, we may surface somewhere and survive."

"And then what?" asked Abbey.

"Well, and then we'd keep sailing, I guess," replied Anna, "On and on through the night until we find Carthage again. Right now, we're basically being sucked from one darkness into another."

As the three of them stood there, they could feel the ship beginning to pick up speed as it was drawn closer and closer to the whirlpool.

"So," said Anna to Abbey, "What exactly was that thing - the crystal I mean. It seemed pretty wild." She saw the look of despair on Abbey's face. "Don't worry," she said, "You can trust me. I'm just curious. I've never seen anything like it before."

"You have no idea…" said Kayla.

"Oh, that," said Abbey, "It's… I don't know, to be honest with you. Kayla and I do research for the United States government, and it was brought to us for examination. We haven't been able to find out too much about it, other than, well, it seems to be an object of enormous power." She thought about adding "enormous negative power" but decided against it.

"Oh, I see," said Anna, "Sounds like just the sort of thing my brother would love to get his hands on."

"You have a brother?" asked Abbey.

"Yeah, Pygmalion," replied Anna, "Not the kind of person you'd want to meet. It's said he dabbled in certain subjects most people would rather stay away from. I know he had a few old tomes and would occasionally read them, and perhaps even try out a few things, if you know what I mean."

"I do," said Abbey, "And I pity him. Most people who dabble in those sorts of things are like children playing with fire. They rarely know what they are doing, and if frustration from lack of understanding does not discourage them, they will eventually hurt themselves enough to fear such topics the rest of their lives."

"Oh," said Anna thoughtfully, "Hmmmm, I wonder if that's how he ended up growing a third nostril. I tried asking him back when we lived in Tyre, but he was always so touchy about it."

"Ew!" exclaimed Kayla, "That's really creepy."

"Yep," replied Anna, "Oh, he also killed my brother in law. Yeah, those were some pretty rough times." Her face grew sad as she remembered Dido and all the things they had been through together.

For a minute or so, they stood there in silence. The ship was undoubtedly picking up speed now, going faster and faster. Now, their distance from the center of the whirlpool was just small enough for their circular trajectory to be detected.

"Ugh," said Abbey, holding her stomach, "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Considering where we're headed, that might be the least of your problems," said Anna, "But we'll see. Gosh, I wonder what will become if Carthage if I really don't make it back. They'll be without a queen, and Pygmalion will no doubt come to claim the city as his own." The thought caused her heart to beat faster with rage. "That stupid Trojan," she muttered under her breath, spitting out the words.

"Ummm, I think the product of our centripetal acceleration and the mass of most objects in the room is soon going to exceed the product of their masses and the floor's coefficient of friction," said Kayla.

"Huh?" replied Anna.

"What I mean is… AH!" Kayla ducked as a painting of a cucumber hanging over her bed flew off and missed her head by a mere inch. A moment later, everything, including the two beds in the room, was sliding around on the floor.

"I meant that things were going to get intense soon," said Kayla, "Also, we probably should have brought helmets with us or something."

Kayla was right. Things certainly were getting more intense. The floor was now tilted as a result of the ship leaning toward the center of the whirlpool. As the angle grew steeper and steeper, everything rolled to the wall of the cabin across from the door, including Abbey, who had curled herself up into a ball, planning to ride out the next few minutes in that position. A faint sound could be heard, resembling that of a toilet being flushed. It was the sound of the water roaring and foaming around the ship.

"You know," said Anna, struggling to remain balanced, "I think I'm just going to do what Abbey's doing." She sat down, curled her knees up to her chest, hugged them, and rolled over to join her. Kayla, meanwhile, adjusted her stance, keeping her feet far apart and her center of balance low. "Well this is a strange situation to be in," she thought to herself. A moment later, she was airborne.

"WHOA! WATCH OUT ABBEY!" she screamed, flying across the room and smashing into the wall right next to her friend. "Wow, holy crap." A second later, everything was pure chaos.

The ship, nearing the center and bottom of the whirlpool, had flipped completely on its side before being rolled in every direction, tumbling around, as often rightside up as it was upside down.

"AAAAUUGGHH!" screamed Abbey, still curled up in a ball, as she bounced off the roof and knocked her elbow against the ceiling fan.

"WHEEEEEE!" screamed Kayla, flailing her arms around as she was tossed back and forth, flying through the air, "THIS IS AWESOME! IT'S LIKE WE'RE IN SPACE, BUT A WHOLE LOT MORE PAINFUL. OW! WHAT WAS THAT? ABBEY, I THINK YOUR LAPTOP JUST HIT ME ON THE HEAD. OH, SORRY ANNA!"

This continued on, leading to a point where the ship was spinning in circles so fast they felt like they were in a blender. Then, from there, things began to calm down. The motion of the ship slowed, until finally, Abbey, out of breath, found herself able to stand up on the wall and lean against the ceiling. The ship was sideways. A moment later, a glimmer of hope filled their hearts as they felt it rising up the surface.

"I think… I think we might live," gasped Anna.

"Gosh, I sure hope no one was in the gym during all that," said Abbey, "What with all the dumbbells flying around and everything."

"That would be hilarious,"said Kayla, "I do wonder what the pool is like now."

"Eh, I doubt there's a whole lot of water left in it," replied Anna.

Together, they remained in silence, catching their breath as the ship rose higher and higher.


	18. They See the Light

"Is everyone alright?" asked a voice from somewhere in the corner, followed by faint murmuring from everyone else in the room. Like the others, Jake was lying on the groun, battered and bruised, really wishing he had put on his armor before going through all that.

Brian was the least troubled of them all. At the same moment Kayla had been thrown across the room, so had Brian. The Trojan warrior, however, deciding that was not something he wanted to go through again, had drawn his sword, stuck it into the wall, and remained holding onto it for the entirety of their wild journey through the whirlpool. Now that it was over, he stood up and began surveying the room.

Needless to say, it was a mess. Bunk beds lay everywhere, tipped over on their sides. Pieces of armor were scattered across the room, along with spears and swords. "It's a miracles no one got impaled during all that," he thought to himself before walking around, trying to find Jake and brave Serestus.

"Yo, what's up?" he asked Jake, upon finding his body among all the others.

"Uh, it looks like the wall," replied Jake, opening his eyes.

"Oh yeah, you're right," said Brian, looking up, "Hmmm, looks like we're going to need a ladder to reach it. Oh, wait, we can just use one of the bunk beds."

He walked over to one of the beds, and with a grunt, set it upright and dragged it under the door.

"Dude, where are you going," asked some Carthaginian soldier. Other than Brian, no one else had gotten up yet.

"I've never been in a sideways ship before," replied Brian, "I want to see what it's like." Saying this, he climbed onto the top bunk, opened the door, which was now a trapdoor of sorts, and climbed onto the wall of the hallway. "Whoa," he thought to himself, "This looks funny."

It was a bit tricky maneuvering his way through the ship. The staircase was especially confusing to look at. Instead of going up the stairs, he walked along the wall from the first floor to the second floor. "Hey, this is kind of fun," he thought to himself.

Trying to work out how to get to the lounge, he tilted his head sideways. The next thing he knew, he was thrown against the floor, and all around him, he heard the sound of objects sliding as the ship, groaning, righted itself. Apparently, it had finally broken through the surface. From somewhere up ahead, he heard cheering.

"Yeah! We're alive," shouted a voice, "Let's try that again!"

"Uh, how about no," replied someone else. Brian turned the corner and saw Abbey, Kayla, and Anna.

"Hey Brian," said Abbey, "Isn't it nice to be standing on the floor again?"

"Yeah, it sure is," said Brian, "I'm surprised to see you all here. Everyone in my room is too beat up to move."

"Yeah, so are we," replied Anna, "But Kayla really wanted to ride the elevator sideways and kind of dragged us along with her."

"Oh I just took the stairs," said Brian, "I was planning to go to the lounge to look out the window, but now that we've surfaced, I guess I'll head up to the deck now.

"We'll come with you," said Anna, "I'll contact the crew later to assess the damages. Right now, we're all just lucky to be alive."

The four of them made their way up to the deck. It was easier, but not as fun, now that the ship was right side up again. Still, they found themselves stepping over paintings, ming vases, coffee tables, and other random decorations that had not been attached to a wall or floor.

"The door's still locked," said Abbey, pulling on the handle.

"Oh, yeah, let me get that," said Anna, pulling out a key and unlocking it. She opened the door and they all walked out on deck.

"Ah, isn't it beautiful out today," said Anna, stretching her arms and smiling.

"Yeah," agreed Brian, hesitantly. Something felt off. Suddenly, he realized what it was.

"The sun! The sun's out!" he exclaimed. The three others stared a moment before realizing what he meant.

"By Jove!" said Anna, "It is. It really is out. Now how did that happen?"

"Well, we're clearly in a different place than we were before," said Brian. They all stood looking up at the sky now, and drinking in with their eyes the beautiful shade of light blue they had almost forgotten about. With it came a sense of clarity, openness, and freedom that just filled their hearts with joy.

Suddenly, they all took a step back as the water in front of them began to froth and a large object rose out of it. It soon became apparent that it was another ship in the fleet surfacing. For the next ten minutes, the rest of the ships in the fleet gradually popped up around them. Anna's ship, leading the fleet, had been the first to enter the whirlpool and the first to leave it.

"We're missing three," said Anna after some time had passed without another ship appearing.

"They'll surface eventually," said Kayla, "Unless they weren't built as well as the rest."

"Good Lord, I sure hope that wasn't the case," said Anna, "I expect I'll be getting tons of calls soon from all the ships' captains asking me what to do now. To heck if I know."

"Well, we'll just do the same thing we were doing before," said Brian, "Try to get back to Carthage. Now that I think of it, we're probably in our world again. Hey, look…"

The others looked at where he was pointing and saw a small ship, clearly not from the fleet. Its sharp hull was painted white and cut through the water straight towards them. Upon its square mast waved a flag - a gold crocus on a green and blue background.


	19. Jake Is Having a Bad Day

"Hello? May I speak to the captain of this ship?" asked a well dressed man from the small ship that had come to meet them.

"It's me," said Anna, "What do you want?" Technically, she was the commander of the fleet and not the captain of the ship, but for practical purposes, it was clear the man just wanted to speak to someone with authority.

"Her majesty, Queen Elsa of Arendelle, desires to know for what reason this fleet has appeared off her shores."

"Oh, there's a kingdom nearby?" asked Anna, "Great! Uh, it's kind of hard to explain. We all got stuck in a whirlpool and kind of just found ourselves here, but assure your queen we mean you no harm."

The man looked at Anna suspiciously, trying to find any hint that she was trying to deceive him. She understood his need to be cautious. Her own sister had allowed a storm damaged fleet to dock in her city and suffered heavily as a result of this decision.

"Would her majesty, the queen, like to meet me in person?" she asked, "Perhaps I could explain our situation better to her if I had more time. Unless, of course, you want to come aboard where I can tell you everything."

"Uh, the queen is not here right now; she's currently visiting the kingdom of Corona, however her sister, the princess Anna currently attends to her affairs and acts in her name…"

"So… what do you want me to do?" asked Anna.

"Eh, I suppose I could take you to her," said the man, "They are all quite baffled and a bit worried. It is not every day that a fleet of warships appears out of nowhere right outside our harbor. Well, come on in then.

The whole conversation had been done shouting. Anna, Kayla, Abbey, and Brian were on the top deck of their ship. The man, on the deck of his smaller ship, was a considerable distance below them. Anna called for a sailor to bring a rope, tied it to a rail, and climbed down. "It's best if I go alone," she said to the others, "Don't worry about me. I'll be fine." Her feet touched down on the deck of the other ship, and a minute later, they were sailing off into the distance to Arendelle, which lay just over the horizon.

"So, do we just wait until she comes back?" asked Kayla.

"Wait around I guess. I mean, unless you plan to sail off without her or something," said Brian.

"Haha, very funny Brian," replied Kayla, "Ew, what did I just step in?" It turned out to be a large piece of seaweed. The deck was covered with them.

"Well, I'm going to go see if any of my roommates are recovered enough from that spin we all took. In the meantime, you two might want to go tell the captain where Anna is. I'm sure he'll be delighted to know that close by, there are people who can probably tell us where the heck we are."

"Yeah, we'll go do that," said Abbey, "I hope she comes back soon."

The three of them returned inside and went their separate ways. Brian made his way to the staircase and had to actually go down the stairs, unable to walk down the wall now that the ship was right side up again. He opened the door to his room and was more than a little surprised to see that while he was gone, the others had managed to put the bunks back in their former places and clean things up a little.

"Hey everyone!" he said, "The sun's out again!"

"What? No way!" said one of the Carthaginian soldiers, "You'd better not be joking."

"I'm not," replied Brian, "Go out and see for yourself." Everyone in the room looked around at each other.

"Alrighty then," said another Carthaginian soldier, "Let's go look." The news, it seemed, was too good to be true, and they all silently got up and left the room, afraid to get their hopes up lest they be disappointed. In the end, the only two left in the room were Brian and Jake.

"Hey Jake, why don't you head on up and see?" asked Brian.

"Ugh, I'm too tired," said Jake, If it really is up and has begun its daily routine again, I can go see it whenever. Also, you know how you moved that bunk bed next to me to climb up to the door?"

"Yeah?" replied Brian

"Well, when the ship turned upright again, it fell over and almost crushed me," said Jake.

"Oh, sorry about that," said Brian, "By the way, there's land nearby. Apparently a kingdom of sorts. A messenger came from it and took Anna to their queen, or rather, their princess, who apparently also happens to be named Anna."

Jake looked at Brian, not fully registering what he had just said. It seemed that ever since they could remember, they had been sailing in some endless ocean in some endless night with no end to either in sight, and had, in their hearts, accepted that this was always to be the case. So much had happened in the past fifteen minutes that it was difficult for someone like Jake who had not witnessed any of it to take it all in.

"Dude, you don't look too well," said Brian.

"The Book 6 test is going to kill me," replied Jake, "I kind of wish the whirlpool got me first."


	20. Bis Annae

"Do have a seat. I really regret my sister isn't here to speak with you herself," said Anna, sitting down on a couch.

"Oh, this is such a lovely castle," replied Anna, "When I get back to Carthage, I'll need to install a chandelier like that. It's magnificent!"

"Haha, thanks!" said Anna, "My father had it installed right before his coronation ceremony. The rest of the castle is quite a mess though. I do apologize for that. Elsa will probably be quite irritated with me."

"Oh, it's just fine," said Anna, "You should see mine. A bunch of Trojan warriors had been staying with us right before we left. Ugh! You won't believe what the monsters did to the place."

"Oh my, that sounds terrible," replied Anna, "So, what was it that brought you all the way here from your own kingdom."

"It's a long story," said Anna, with a sigh, "Basically, there was this Trojan prince, Aeneas. He broke my sisters heart by deceiving her, violating her, and then abandoning her. She killed herself and I gathered a fleet to pursue him and avenge her. A lot of strange things happened in the journey, but somewhere along the way, we got pulled into a whirlpool and surfaced right outside your kingdom."

"Wow, that's quite a story," replied Anna, "Yeah, those men. You can never trust them at all. I had something similar happen to me quite recently. Some prince from the Southern Isles, heck I can't even remember his name right now, pretended to love me, but only so he could attempt to take our kingdom. In the process, he nearly killed me."

"By Jove! Well I'm sorry about that," said Anna, "Well, I'm glad you survived. Sheesh, what's wrong with men?"

"They're too obsessed with power," replied Anna, "I mean that guy I spoke of earlier - he wanted a kingdom; he wanted power, so he used deception to try to unlawfully take this one. If he had been a real man, he would have gone on to create his own kingdom from scratch, built from his own bare hands. But no, he was a coward, and quite a lazy one if you ask me"

"Hey, that reminds me of my brother Pygmalion," said Anna, "He also tried to take my sister's city, but succeeded in doing so and killed her husband in the process."

"Oh I'm sorry about that," said Anna, "It looks like you've been through a lot lately. Hopefully you won't find any trouble here. I like to think that after the events of the past month, all our troubles are finally over." During this time, the queen of Carthage and princess of Arendelle were amazed at how much they had in common with each other.

"What happened?" asked Anna.

"Well," began Anna, "My sister had her coronation, but as it turned out, she has magical ice powers and never told anyone and somehow ended up freezing the whole place and starting an eternal winter. While I was trying to fix that, Hans, oh yeah, that's his name, was trying to take over the kingdom. Then, when we got that mess sorted out, Weselton declared war on us, but we defeated them easily and they now pay tribute to us each month. So yeah, the last few weeks have been pretty wild. But back to you. What happened with your brother?"

"He's still in charge of old Tyre," answered Anna, "Dido and I fled and built a city in Libya. Oh, it's in Africa, if you know where that is. Anyhow, it was called Carthage, and it was a rich city trained and fierce in war. Juno loved it, they say, far beyond all other lands, even beloved Samos, second best. Wait, I think I'm quoting the Aeneid again. I do that sometimes while talking. Anyhow, yeah, we picked a great spot for it, I think, and had almost had it finished when all this happened."

"Ugh, that's terrible," said Anna, "I do hope you make it back there alright and that your city remains safe. Those kingdoms with female rulers are very fortunate. Too bad there are far too few of them in the world."

"Indeed, quite true," replied Anna, "Men love power, and will do anything to acquire their own kingdom, whether by creating it from scratch or taking it from another by force. Having done this, rarely are they able to nurture this kingdom, support its people, or harmonize it with the flow of the universe. They cannot care for what they have. When the people are dissentious, they cannot dissolve all social tension with love and make society whole. When the people are downtrodden, they cannot renew the kingdom's motivation for existing, or heal its wounds when it is attacked in war. Men cannot do any of this. It is not in their nature. They fight force with force. They send in the army to solve every problem, internal or external. They rule from a strict hierarchy, because such a rigid structure is needed to give them the feeling of order and safety. They are insecure about themselves, and their power. My own sister was the wisest ruler I ever came across. She knew how to care for her people, but she's gone now. I suppose now I must try to do the same. My people depend on me."

"My own sister and I work hard to do the same," said Anna, "If the ruler of a kingdom cannot do all this, then it will all fall apart. The Southern Isles right now are going through quite a bit of political turmoil. It's rulers care more for acquiring power than for the wellbeing of the people. There are a number of nobles and princes all fighting. The problem with men is they don't know how to put aside their egos, which are far too easily damaged. In all cases, the source of their thoughts and actions lies in defending this ego, instead of in wisdom."

"Aeneas, the man responsible for my sister's death, went off to found his own kingdom," mused Anna.

"Oh he may found it," began Anna, "But it will not last forever. It will be a great kingdom, blessed by Mars, and thus, strong in war and battle. The energy of Mars is a great driving force. Mars is a fiery god, and his planet is fiery as well. His force has the quality of expansiveness, and Rome, the city he is to found, will possess all these qualities as well. The raw energy of Mars will fuel the kingdom only for so long, but it will not last forever. If the Romans never learn to embody Mars's opposite, the horrible imbalance will destroy them. Trust me, they won't. Men never learn to do that."

"Well, that's nice to know," said Anna, "I only wish one day, they would manage to do it somehow, but I doubt it will come to pass. Men aren't that intelligent."

"I doubt they will too," replied Anna, "More likely than not, history will just repeat itself. Three millennia from now, a country will arise on a continent on the opposite side of the world from which you come. In many ways, it will be extremely similar to the kingdom Aeneas is going to found, but its leaders will not be any wiser than those of Rome in its last days. The country will find itself in massive debt, and filled with corruption and scandal. It's politicians will fight each other over petty things, preventing them from putting their minds together and cooperating. To save the country, they would all have to look inward for their opposite and unite with it. They would have to embody the feminine mysteries and learn our ways."

"Any chance of that happening?" asked Anna.

"Heck no," replied Anna.


	21. A Relatively Productive Afternoon

"Ok, where should we start?" asked Kayla, "I kind of want to review Book 1 a little. I get the feeling the test is going to be more like a midterm of sorts."

After Anna's conversation with Anna, she had given her permission to dock the fleet in her harbor until they were ready to set sail again. Everyone had spent the previous two days exploring the kingdom. Now, it was now the afternoon of the third day of the fleet's stay in Arendelle, and Brian, Jake, Kayla, Abbey, and the Author were sitting at a Starbucks, sipping their drinks and getting ready to study for the upcoming Latin test."

"I have no idea what happened in Book 1," said Jake, "Well, other than that part where Aeneas ranted about how wanted to die. You know, the part we had to write an essay on. I think that was in Book 1."

"You know," said Brian, "Before studying the text, maybe we should review some grammar. Remember that section on the last test that killed everyone?"

Jake groaned as the memories of that horror came flooding back. "Holy crap, there's probably going to be another one of those on the next test," he said.

"Yeah, that's what I mean," said Brian.

"But wait, poetry breaks the rules of grammar all the time," replied Kayla, "Like, what if she asks us the case of a word and its supposed to be accusative, but instead, Vergil uses the dative form because it fits the meter. What are we supposed to write in that case?"

"Huh, yeah," said Brian, "I'm not sure."

"You know," said the Author, "That might be true, but I'm pretty sure she's not going to ask us about those words. It's not like she's out to get us or something. If a word looks accusative, it's probably supposed to be accusative."

"Wait, what does accusative mean?" asked Jake.

"Oh, wow, we really do need to review grammar," said the Author, "Hmmm, let's start with something easy. Any ideas?" As he spoke, he opened the lid of his cup and began stirring its contents with a straw.

"How about conjugating semi-deponent verbs in the subjunctive mood?" offered Kayla.

"Sounds good to me," replied Abbey, "We'll cover all topics anyway so it doesn't matter where we start. Looks like we're going to be in this kingdom a while."

"Fair enough," said Brian, "So what's a semi-deponent verb?"

"It's a deponent verb divided by two," replied the Author, "We learned about them way back in exploratory Latin. Remember?"

"Ugh, I can't remember anything from that far back," said Brian, "Let's try something more recent."

"Hey," said Abbey, "You know what would be a good idea? How about if we tried to re-memorize all that hic haec hoc stuff from earlier. If there is a grammar question, it's probably going to ask us for the gender, number, and case of some form of hic, ille, is, or qui."

The others immediately realized that Abbey's statement was filled with profound wisdom, the likes of which had not been seen on Earth since the time of Solomon.

"Ok, so how do you want to do this?" asked the Author.

"I know," said Kayla, "We'll each take turns reciting the forms of hic. Each time someone make a mistake, the others pour coffee on him or her."

"Uh, I doubt the janitors here would like that," said Brian, "And besides, I don't have many spare pieces of clothing considering I was kind of unexpectedly dragged along on this trip."

"Ok, come on," said Abbey, "Let's get started already. I'll go first - hic, haec, hoc, huius, huius, huius, huic, huic, huic, hunc, ancilla, hoc…"

"No, you missed one," said the Author, "The singular accusative feminine should be hanc, not ancilla."

"Yeah, I know. I was just trying to see if anyone was actually paying attention. Anyhow - hoc, hac, hoc, hi, hae, haec, horum, harum, horum, his, his his, hos, has, haec, his, his, his. There! How did I do?"

"I think that's right," replied the Author, "Did anyone notice anything wrong?"

"No, I think that was all right," said Brian, "Hold on, I'll be back. I'm going to get another frappuccino." He stood up and walked to the counter.

"Alright, who wants to go next?" asked Abbey.

"I'll go I guess," said the author. He recited all forms of the word perfectly, followed by Kayla.

"So, it's my turn now?" asked Jake.

"Yep," replied the Author, "Come on now, you can do it."

"Sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt," said Jake.

"Eh, er, close enough," said the author, "So, do you want to move on to the forms of ille while we wait for Brian?"

"Nah, let's do something different," replied Abbey, "We can come back to that later. Too much rote memorization is going to tire us out. Let's let the hic haec hoc stuff be absorbed into our brains without confusing it with other similar stuff."

"Alright, fair enough," said Kayla, "Hmmmm, how about we review verb forms."

"Ew, no," said Jake, "We'd just be staring at charts for the next hour."

"Well, we have to know them," replied Kayla, "We can just do a couple of verb synopses or something. It shouldn't take too long."

"Fine, do we start?" asked Jake.

"The present tense would make sense," said Abbey, "We'll just review how to form a verb in each conjugation into all present tense forms."

"Wait, what? Why don't we start with the infinitive?" asked Jake, "I forget how that's formed."

"Oh, that's easy enough," said Brian, who had just returned, "If it ends in 'ere,' it's an infinitive." He sat down again in his chair and placed his frappucino on the table, waiting for it to cool.

"No, not always," said the Author, "It could also be a perfect tense third person plural verb. I'm serious. Look at this." He opened his textbook to line 152 of Book 1. "See, that's perfect," he said.

"That looks like an infinitive," replied Brian, "Oh wait, no, I know what you mean now. Yeah, I do remember her talking about that. Man, Book 1 seems like so long ago."

"Yeah, it does. Just be careful. So, present tense you guys said?"

The five of them spent the next few hours staring at the charts for the active forms of the indicative present, imperfect, future, perfect, future perfect, and pluperfect in all four conjugations. Then they reviewed the charts of the passive forms of those words, before looking at the charts for the active and passive forms of the present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect subjunctive. Then, they looked at all the charts for the active and passive versions of the indicative and subjunctive forms of deponent verbs and then did the same with semi deponent verbs.

"AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," screamed Jake. He stood up, grabbed his coffee, threw it across the room, and ran out the door.

"Yeah, I need a break too," said Kayla, "Let's all go for a swim."

"Nah, it's too late. Maybe tomorrow," said Brian, "Let's go find someplace to have dinner."


	22. Ambush!

"Boy, it sure is nice outside today," said Abbey, upon reaching the top of the hill.

"Yeah," said Jake, "Too bad Aeneas isn't here. I'm sure she would enjoy a hike like this."

"She?" asked Abbey, confused, "I thought Aeneas was a guy."

"Oh yeah, that's right," said Jake, "As you can see, it's been a while since I last saw him."

For a while, Abbey, Kayla, Jake, Brian, and brave Serestus stood at the top of the hill, looking out on the valley below. They had decided to take a hike through the forest behind the main city. Anna had stayed back to oversee the process of repairing and restocking the ships. The Author had been missing since Tuesday, and no one knew where to find him.

The way was flat now. They wandered off the established trail some time ago, deciding to do some exploring on their own. Pressing onward, they relished the dry land and the warm sunny day. Even now, their days stuck at sea in an eternal night seemed like a mere dream. As they walked, they discussed many random things, including how chicken mcnuggets are formed, the evils of Monsanto, and the symbolism of a melting toaster.

"Hey Brian," said Jake, "You never did tell us the story of Magistra's Car Tire."

"Oh, yeah, that's right," said Brian, "What a perfect time to do so. Do you guys want to hear it?"

The others excitedly replied in the affirmative. They had nearly forgotten about Brian's stupendous constellations from the previous world they had been in, but now they were genuinely curious to hear the story of the last of them.

"Alright," said Brian, "Once upon a…"

At that moment, Abbey heard a familiar twanging sound from somewhere off to the side. Before her mind had time to register the sound, she instinctively tackled the others to the ground as an arrow flew overhead, going through the spot where brave Serestus's head had been a moment before.

"Run!" shouted Jake, getting up and drawing his sword. He rushed toward the area from whence the arrow came and saw a dwarf about to place another arrow on his bow. Swinging his sword, he sliced the bow in half and held the point to the dwarf's neck. "What is the meaning of this?" he asked, "Who are you and…" He stopped speaking when he saw the shadow of another dwarf about to bring a battle ax down on his head from behind. Whirling around, he raised his sword, blocked the blow, seized that dwarf by his arm, and flung him onto the ground.

Meanwhile, eight dwarfs wielding battle axes had sprung up around the others. All wore rough cardboard vests and leather jeans. One lunged at Abbey, only to double over and collapse onto the ground, having been struck in the stomach by a wakizashi thrown by Kayla. Pulling out her katana, she charged forward. A moment later, three dwarf arms and a leg flew through the air, followed by two heads.

"Wow, you're really good with that thing," said Brian, who had not even drawn his own sword yet.

"I actually prefer my nodachi since I don't have to get too close to my enemies," replied Kayla, "But I didn't feel like dragging that giant thing with my on that balloon ride. Of course, I had no idea I would end up being ambushed by dwarves. Whoa! Look out!"

Brian ducked as a battle ax swung over his head. Without missing a beat, he slammed his elbow into the dwarf's solar plexus as brave Serestus delivered a well aimed roundhouse kick to his kidneys. The four remaining dwarves took a step back, considering their options.

"Who sent you, and why?" asked Kayla.

"Give us the ear!" demanded one of the dwarves, presumably the leader. Unlike the others, his vest was decorated with a lace border and an obsidian eleven pointed star.

"Try and take it," snapped Kayla. The dwarf glanced cautiously at the sharp point of her blade, dripping with thick muddy blood.

"It's not yours," said the dwarf.

"Is it yours?" asked Kayla.

"It is clearly an object of great evil," said Abbey, "Anyone deliberately seeking it is clearly up to no good, regardless of whether it rightfully belongs to them or not."

The dwarf glared at her and raised his battle ax, realizing that the only way he could get the crystal ear was by force. There were now five dwarves and five humans. For a full minute, they stood there staring awkwardly at each other. At last, the leader of the dwarves began backing away slowly. The other others followed his example. When there was a considerable amount of distance between the two groups, they turned and ran off into the woods.

"What the heck was that all about?" asked Brian.

"I don't know," said Jake, "But we need to get back to the city where it's safe. At least there, we won't be ambushed that easily."

"Unless we're walking through the ghetto in the middle of the night," replied Brain.

"Oh confound it all. Seriously, let's go," said Jake, before walking down the hill again, followed by Abbey, Brian, and brave Serestus. Kayla performed chiburi with her sword and replaced it in its scabbard before looking around for her wakizashi. Finding it, she yanked it out of the dwarf's dead body and ran after the others.

They walked in silence now, listening for any sound of danger. Retracing their steps, they made their way back to the entrance to the trail at the edge of the woods and headed for the city gates.


	23. In the Castle Library

"Have you found anything yet?" asked Kayla.

"Nothing important," replied Abbey, with a sigh, "What about you?"

The two friends were alone in the castle's main library. They had spent the entire afternoon searching among old dusty volumes for any information on the crystal ear. It was an enormous section of the castle, located entirely underground and containing hundreds of shelves scattered through multiple rooms and halls. Some were more brightly lit than others.

Abbey slammed another book shut and placed it back on its shelf. So far, she had found many books on crystals. Some were geology textbooks that spoke of their formation and physical properties. Some were books on jewelry making, giving instructions on how to cut and polish them. Others were magic textbooks and contained instructions for trapping spirits in crystals, harmonizing crystals with a specific elemental or planetary current, channeling energy through crystals, and enchanting crystals. These, Abbey paid particular attention to, hoping to gain insight into the construction and uses of the crystal ear. Despite all her time searching, she still found no information specifically referencing the sinister object hidden within her purse.

"No," said Kayla, "The next couple of sections seem to be about art and architecture, "Let's go down to the next floor and see if we can find anything there."

"You can," replied Abbey, "I'll remain here for a bit more. Once we leave a section, we're probably not going to come back."

"Alright, but I doubt you'll find anything," said Kayla, walking over to the staircase.

She made her way down and looked around. "Hmmm, it seems like the lower I go, the older the books are," she thought to herself. She went to a shelf and began searching through it. Seeing that all the books were about taxidermy, she moved onto the next shelf, which was filled with books about ancient civilizations. She picked one up and skimmed through it out of interest.

"Oh, ok, that's creepy," she thought to herself, upon reaching a chapter about Teotihuacan, "So an entire great city just mysteriously collapsed for no discernable reason?"

She heard footsteps behind her; it was Abbey, covered with dust.

"So," she said, "What's down here."

"Nothing relevant," replied Kayla, "At least I don't think there is. They really need some sort of map for this place."

"Anna said so too," said Abbey, "It was going to be one of her big projects after the whole mess with Weselton and all that. If you ask me, wait, shhh…"

They both froze as they heard a faint rustling sound. Suddenly, Abbey shrieked and jumped back, her heart pounding. Both her shadow and Kayla's were clearly visible on the ground. While looking down, she had noticed a third shadow pass through theirs as something flew between them and the lights above. She glanced upward before attempting to peer through the shelves, placing her hand in her pocket and fingering a shuriken she had placed in there.

"Oh, ok, so we're not alone," said Kayla, rather loudly, "Well that's nice to know." She drew her katana and began walking along the shelves. Abbey drew her kampilan and followed her.

"Don't worry guys, it's just me," said Magistra, standing on top of one of the shelves, "I came looking for a book on reversing the harmful effects of exposure to benzene."

"Oh, haha Magistra, you almost gave me a heart attack," said Kayla, returning back to her place among the shelves and pulling out another book, this one about Atlantis and flipping to the index. Looking under the index, she went under the "c" section and looked for the word "crystal."

"Page 47," she muttered to herself, turning to the page. She began reading aloud.

"The destruction of Atlantis was due to a number of different factors. During the last century or so of the continent's existence, its people focused heavily on the expansion of science and technology, neglecting other aspects of culture like art. The result of this imbalance was a decrease in their society's collective wisdom. Focused only on acquiring power through conquest and technological development, they were blind to the inevitable consequences of their actions. During their last few years, the Atlanteans experimented with methods of acquiring free energy, building devices to channel energy from other dimensions into their own. Because they lacked the knowledge to control for the quality of this energy, they ended up opening gateways into very dark realms. The devices used to do this often made use of crystals, which were at the center of Atlantean technology."

"Oh, well isn't that interesting," said Kayla, "All the knowledge in this library about crystals combined probably couldn't hold a candle to what the Atlanteans knew."

A shiver ran down Abbey's spine. "This must be it," she said.

"What?" asked Kayla.

"The crystal ear. It's from Atlantis," replied Abbey, "Or if it isn't, at least we have an idea of how dangerous crystals can be when people have been messing around with them. Whatever it is, it has certain very powerful but dark properties that someone wants to get hold of."

"Uh, didn't we know that already?" asked Kayla.

"Yeah, I guess we kind of did," said Abbey, "Ugh, ok, you know what? I'm done here. We're not going to find anything more specific. Let's go."

She walked to the steps and began walking up, planning to take an hour long shower after spending the entire afternoon wallowing through dust. Kayla stayed for another minute or so, flipping through the book. Much of the information was vague. It seemed like not a whole lot was known about the once mighty civilization that had lived and fallen so long ago. Deciding there was nothing more to be gained, she closed the book and put it back on the shelf.

"See yah, Magistra," said Kayla, as she ran after Abbey.

"Bye Kayla, have a nice day!" replied Magistra, as she looked up from the book she was reading. She was hovering in the air near the top row of a shelf, flapping one arm and holding the book with the other.


	24. Why Abbey Was Late for Dinner

Abbey threw her purse onto her desk and collapsed onto her bed. It had been a long day. She and the others, including Anna, had gone to the zoo. Somehow, a rhinoceros had escaped its cage and run amok. Since it had been wearing armor, it was impervious to the zookeeper's tranquilizer darts, and Abbey had ended up wrestling the thing back into its cage. Now, despite being quite bruised and scratched up, she was still expected to make an appearance at dinner.

Opening her eyes, she glanced up at the clock. It was 6:45. Dinner would begin in fifteen minutes, and she had until then to make herself presentable. With a loud sigh, she got up and walked over to her dresser, picked up her comb, and began straightening out her hair. Looking into the mirror, she was surprised to see a great black cloud of locusts enter the window behind her. Dropping the comb, she shrieked and turned around, watching in horror as the cloud solidified into the form of a great black demon.

The demon lunged at her, claws outstretched. Still recovering from her initial shock, she leapt to the side, seized a kerambit with her toes, and lashed out at the demon with a spinning crescent kick. She missed and transferred the weapon to her hand.

"What… what are you?" asked Abbey, backing away slowly.

"You've heard of flying monkey, I presume?" replied the malevolent entity in a raspy voice.

Abbey nodded her head. "You mean like in the Wizard of Oz?" she asked.

The demon laughed. "The witches in that movie were nothing," he began, "And those monkeys were pathetic. They are mere children in our land, and possessed no magic of their own. No, not even ten wicked witches of the east or west could ever control me. But for their purposes, all they needed was a bunch of blindly obedient servants. My name is Monsanto, and I am a duke in the kingdom of the flying monkeys. Someone sent me after you, girl. Someone powerful, and you had best give me what I want."

"Who? Who sent you?" asked Abbey, putting her hand in her pocket. Over the past minute, the temperature of the room must have dropped ten degrees.

"Now isn't that an excellent question?" said the demoni figure, "He wore a silk robe with a hood, and a silk mask over his face when he called me. Some dark mage. I do not know his identity, nor do I care. My time is being wasted right now, fulfilling his petty task." The demon turned and saw Abbey's purse lying on the desk. "Oh," he said, "Never mind then." With a loud cry, he seized it and took off, flying out the window.

Abbey, momentarily stunned, drew a shuriken from her pocket and flung it. Her aim was perfect, and the lethal metallic star embedded itself in the creature's ribcage. With a shriek, it stopped flying and spiraled to the ground. Without missing a beat, Abbey grabbed her Kampilan, leapt out of the window, somersaulted twice, and hit the ground running. She grabbed the purse, which the creature had dropped and placed it over her shoulder before leaping back away from the claws of the satanic flying monkey. Raising her arms up, she tried to bring the sword down on its neck, but it too dodged her.

"Ah, so you're a warrior of sorts, eh?" asked the great duke of the flying monkeys.

"No, I'm a researcher at Area 51 and a former physics professor," replied Abbey, "I just happen to also be an expert on escrima."

"Seems legit," replied the winged figure, "Well, I'm going to need that purse."

For the third time in her life, Abbey watched as an enormous glowing black flying monkey charged at her and attempted to tear her to pieces with its claws. The next thing she knew, they were both fighting for their lives, blade against claw. Despite the demon's original injury, it was still slightly superior to Abbey, who soon found herself being pushed back further and further toward the castle wall.

Before the demon could corner her, however, both stepped away from each other to catch their breaths.

"Say," said Abbey, "I thought demons couldn't be hurt by physical weapons."

"It depends," replied the flying monkey, "Your purse is a physical thing. Therefore, to hold it and carry it off, I must assume a physical form. When I am in a physical form, I can be hurt by physical weapons, but not otherwise. Of course, in order to tear you up with my claws, I must also assume a physical form and thus, I risk being sliced by your blade. But I doubt that'll happen. You don't look too well."

Abbey was exhausted and panicked, knowing that dinner had certainly begun by now, and that at the moment, everyone was probably waiting for her.

"I'm busy," she replied, "I don't have time for this."

"Look lady," said the flying monkey demon thingy, "Neither do I. And I don't want to hurt you. I have no reason to. Well, aside from the shuriken, but I'll let that pass. Some nut wants your purse for some reason I cannot fathom. Give me the purse and we can part as friends. You can't win this fight. Save yourself some trouble, and your life."

"Oh alright," said Abbey, "I suppose handing it over really is the best thing to do." Feigning a sad expression, she tossed her purse to the ghostly winged primate.

"Thanks," said the shadowy entity, "Don't worry. You live in a castle, for goodness sake. Surely you can afford another one. Well, in any case, I've gotta go now." The creature turned around and took off again, still dripping blood from its wounds.

Abbey, however, quickly ran inside and back up to her room. The flying monkey had revealed that it had no clue why its sender wanted the purse. Abbey, however, knew it must have had something to do with the crystal ear, and had slipped it into her pocket before giving the purse to the giant orangutan-like creature. Whoever had sent it would surely be enraged upon opening it and realizing the treasured transparent auditory organ was not there. At the moment, she desperately searched for a suitable hiding spot, before deciding to keep it with her.

As she headed out the door, she grabbed her kerambit and put it into her pocket. Court etiquette frowned upon bringing weapons into the dining hall, and since arriving, she had respected this. Now, she realized she might have actual need to defend herself again.


	25. How Bellatrix Really Died

It was a dark and stormy night. Thunder shook the skies, rain poured down in torrents, and the streets of Arendelle were so flooded you could swim down them.

Up above the clouds, however, all was peaceful. Here, Lord Voldemort flew through the air on his broomstick - a brand new Nimbus 9000. He circled around, looking up at the sky to get his bearing from the stars, before plunging downward. Upon breaking through the clouds, he was drenched immediately but continued flying, making a beeline straight for the castle. It was the perfect night for such a mission. The sentinels would have a hard time seeing him coming in from afar.

He hovered by a window on the fifth floor of the castle and peered inside. "Hmmm, the boy's not here," he thought to himself. He remained there, wondering what his next course of action should be. Of course, the safest option was to wait for the boy to come in, go to bed, and fall asleep. Voldemort, however, was a very impatient man. "Oh, I'll just enter the room, knock him out when he comes in through the door, and be done with all this," he thought to himself. He pulled out a swiss army knife, cut a large hole in the window, and flew through.

"Ah," Voldemort sighed. It was warm in the castle. There was no fire burning in the fireplace, but there was a large pile of wood in it. Voldemort considered setting it alight to warm himself further and dry off, but unfortunately, he did not know how to use matches. His wand had been confiscated by his superiors after his failure to take over the wizarding world on Earth. As punishment, he had been sent on a mission to kidnap a certain boy without it. If he succeeded, he would get it back.

Meanwhile, Brian and Jake were heading down the, hall, having just finished playing several intense games of pool with each other. They had decided to go to Jake's room afterwards to study some more Latin grammar because they definitely hadn't had enough of that. Brian entered the room first and was hit on the head with a chair by Voldemort, who was hiding behind the door. As Voldemort reached down to pick up the body, he received a forceful kick to the stomach from Jake that sent him flying across the room. He bounced off the window, shattering it in the process, and landed hard on the floor before picking himself up.

"Eh, there are two of you?" he asked Jake.

"Two of whom?" replied Jake, "What do you mean?"

"Which one of you is Jake?" asked Voldemort, eyeing Jake cautiously and slowly moving toward him.

"I am," replied Jake, thoroughly confused. Abbey had not yet told the others about the flying monkey incident earlier, so he had no idea that he and his friends were being targeted by entities far more powerful than a few dwarves. Indeed, Voldemort's superiors were not the kinds of people you would ever want to run into.

"So you are the one I want," replied Voldemort. He tackled Jake, and the next moment, the two of them were wrestling around on the floor.

Suddenly, Anna and Kayla walked in.

"Hey," said Kayla, "We heard glass breaking and wondered…" Her eyes grew wide as she saw the Trojan warrior and dark wizard trying to strangle each other on the ground. "Hey! Get off my friend!" she shouted. She leapt forward, grabbed Voldemort by his neck, and flung him against the bedpost.

Enraged, he drew two sai from his belt and tried to rush toward his new attacker, only to be tripped by Brian, who had finally come to (marvelous to say!). At the same time, Bellatrix flew in through the window and Abbey walked in through the door.

"My Lord, are you alright?" asked Bellatrix.

"What the heck are you doing here?" asked Voldemort.

"I came to see if you were in need of any assistance," replied the evil witch, leaning her broomstick next to Voldemort's and stepping into the room.

Kayla took one look at Bellatrix and ran out of the room. Upon seeing this, she laughed. "Oh, look, a bunch of scared to death children who don't know what they've gotten themselves into. What a pity. I'll ensure your deaths are as painful as possible." Saying this, she reached into her pocket for her wand and realized it wasn't there. She too was in the same position as Voldemort, and had had her permission to use a wand revoked after her failure. Being a woman with a very short attention span, she had gotten bored of her own redemption mission and come to visit her crush, the Dark Lord.

Actually, as it turned out, Kayla had not run away from fright. She had run away to go get her katana, and a moment later, came charging back in. The next thing everyone knew, Bellatrix lay disemboweled on the floor.

"Shame on you Kayla," said Abbey, observing the growing red stain on the carpet, "Anna's not going to be too happy about this."

"Oh, she'll understand once we tell her we were attacked by a freaking dark wizard and witch," said Anna (the other one).

Voldemort was enraged. He roared like a bull high on drugs and rushed toward Jake, intending to impale him with his two weapons. Jake, leapt on the bed, bounced over the Dark Lord's head, landed by his desk, grabbed his sword from his chair, and unsheathed it. Brian did the same with his, which he happened to have on him. Three blades began repeatedly raining blows down on Voldemort, as Jake, Brian, and Kayla attacked the Dark Lord. The air resounded with the clang of metal against metal as Voldemort struggled to block all of them.

"Where the heck did you learn to fight like this?" asked Kayla.

"I drank a potion that gave me great proficiency in the martial arts," replied Voldemort.

"Go figure!" said Kayla.

Still, the two Trojan warriors and the katana wielding girl proved to be more than a match for him, and it was only by sheer luck that he managed to trap the blade of Brian's sword between two prongs of one of his sai and disarm him. He followed up with a sidekick to his chest, slamming him against the wall.

At that moment, he saw Abbey and Anna entering the room. They had left a minute ago to retrieve their own weapons. Knowing he could not handle all five of them, and knowing that the effects of the potion were going to wear out soon, Voldemort thought fast. Whirling around, the Dark Lord flung his two sai at Kayla to distract her and buy him a few precious seconds, which he used to seize Jake with one hand and his broomstick with the other. With a loud cry of "So long, suckers!" he swung his leg over it and flew toward the window.

"STOP!" screamed Brian. He, Kayla, Jake, Abbey, and Anna all made a lunge for the broomstick. Each managed to seize a handful of bristles, and a second later, found themselves drenched as they were pulled out into the rainy night.


	26. A Midnight Flight

"AAAAUUUUGGGGHH!" screamed everyone, including Voldemort, who was the only one actually on the broomstick. Jake was being held by the back of his shirt, and the others were struggling to hold on to the broom's head as they were dragged behind at nearly the speed of sound. At that speed, the biting wind seemed to rip their skin off, and the raindrops felt like bullets.

"Jake, hold on to the broomstick!" shouted Kayla.

"What?" screamed Jake, "I can't hear you."

"I said hold onto the broomstick," repeated Kayla, a little louder, "There's a good chance he's going to drop you in a moment."

Jake understood. He grabbed onto the broom's handle, and in the process, tried to throw Voldemort off. The broom turned sideways, nearly flinging off Kayla, Brian, Abbey, and Anna.

"Are you crazy, boy?" shouted Voldemort, "You're going to kill us all!"

Despite this, Jake continued struggling. Kayla sheathed her katana and pulled out her wakizashi. With a grunt, she lurched forward and stabbed it into the broom's handle. Then, grabbing it with both hands, she pulled herself up onto it. With her left hand holding the handle of the wakizashi, she began slapping Voldemort on the back of the head with her right.

The broom was now completely out of control, having gone off into a dizzying series of barrel rolls, Cuban eights, hammerheads, outside loops, inverted spins, and a whole host of other aerial maneuvers that caused all six of them to want to puke.

"MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!" screamed Abbey.

"Wait for him to fall off first," shouted Kayla back. She would have drawn her katana and given Voldemort the same fate as Bellatrix, but at this point, she needed both hands to hold onto the wakizashi impaled on the handle.

By now, everyone was too sick to say anything and could only clench tightly to whatever they held. Voldemort and Kayla were actually sitting on the broomstick. Jake was dangling under it, hanging onto the handle. Brian, Abbey, and Anna still held onto the bristles of the broom's head.

Realizing that the broom's acrobatics were getting crazier and crazier, Jake acted fast. With his great Trojan warrior muscles, he did a pull up, making sure to bring his chin above the bar, since that was good form. Then he bit Voldemort's left hand really hard.

"YEOWWW!" cried Voldemort, letting go of the broom in pain. In an instant, he was gone, falling to the ground as his screams were drowned out by the wind.

"We're going to end up like that if we don't get this thing under control!" shouted Anna, "Kayla! Do something!"

"What? Me?" shouted Kayla back.

"Everyone get on!" screamed Jake as he hoisted himself up. Kayla helped pull Abbey right behind her. Abbey pulled Anna, and Anna pulled Brian. All five of them were now sitting on the broomstick, which was beginning to stabilize itself, now that there were no longer people wrestling with each other on it.

"How do we steer?" asked Abbey.

"To heck if I know," replied Jake, "More importantly, how do we land this thing?" The others kept silent, unsure how to respond, and realizing they might be stuck up there a while.

"Uh, did anyone bring snacks?" asked Brian.

"No, sorry, I would have but we were all kind of in a hurry to leave," replied Anna.

"Let me try something," said thrust down hard on the broomstick, which lurched forward into a nose dive.

"Sorry about that!" screamed Jake as he frantically pulled back on the handle, causing the broom to turn abruptly and fly vertically upwards, rocketing toward the sky.

"If you don't want us to become a bloody constellation in the sky…" shouted Brian.

"Ok, ok, I know. I've never done this before," shouted Jake. He pushed downward lightly on the handle, and the broom leveled itself and slowly began to descend.

"Well that's a start," said Abbey, "Which direction is Arendelle?"

"I have no idea!" said Jake.

"Maybe use celestial navigation?" suggested Brian.

"This isn't Earth. We aren't familiar with the stars here. Remember?" responded Abbey.

"Well, if you took us above the clouds again, I could create some new constellations in this world as well," said Brian.

"Uh, how about no," replied Jake, as the broom descended lower and lower. I'm going to try to find a lake or some large body of water. I'll fly as low as possible and when I say 'jump,' we all jump off. You guys with me?"

"Why don't we just land the thing somewhere?" asked Abbey.

"Because I have no idea how to, and I don't want to risk a head on collision with the Earth. I've only figured out how to control direction, and not speed, and the longer we're on this thing, the father away from Arendelle we are. We'll get off, try to find civilization, and ask for directions."

The others agreed to the plan, which was the most sensible course of action any of them could think of. As they continued descending, Jake spied a river below. He turned the broom and began following it, hoping to find where its outlet. Five minutes later, he spied a large lake up ahead.

"Alright, get ready everyone!" he said. He flew low, nearly skimming the water. "Jump!" he screamed.

They all jumped. Hitting the water at that speed, however, knocked the wind out of all of them, but they were soon revived by the freezing temperature of the water. Gasping for breath, they swam for the nearest shore.


	27. To Build a Fire

"Well, it looks like we're not getting any sleep tonight," said Jake miserably.

All five of them had made it safely to shore and now stood soaking wet on in the freezing wind. Luckily, the rain had stopped at some point, although the thick clouds above told them it could start again any minute.

"We're all going to catch pneumonia too if we don't do anything," said Abbey.

"Well, what can we do?" asked Brian, his teeth chattering, "We can't make a fire. Any firewood we find is going to be soaking wet."

"Well, we can gather it all in one place so that when its dry, we can light it immediately," replied Abbey, "Come on. We can't just stand here all night." No one moved, so she decided to take the initiative and walked off into the woods, followed by Brian and then the others. For the next twenty minutes or so, they dragged large branches and small logs to the beach and kept them all in a pile. It was miserable work, moving around in wet clothing.

"About an hour ago, Jake and I were happily playing pool in the castle of Arendelle," said Brian, "I had no idea that in a short while, I would be miles away in this position. Wow, life is unpredictable.'

"Yah, especially if you're on the list of a group of dark wizards," said Abbey, realizing as she spoke that they were still not safe.

"So, do we just wait?" asked Kayla, "I mean, I'm not sleeping. First of all, who knows what's out here? Second of all, it's too uncomfortable. Ugh, I've gotten so used to castle life lately."

"Well, unfortunately, I don't think we have much of a choice," replied Brian.

"Look," said Abbey, "Even wet branches will catch on fire if they are exposed to a hot enough source of heat. Here, let me try something." She looked up at the stars and studied their positions for a while. Then, using certain secrets known only to world's highest ranking physicists, she calculated the angle she needed to hold the blade of her kampilan to direct all their rays toward a small point on a branch. Having done this, she positioned her kampilan at this angle and waited. Fifteen seconds later, a small region on the branch began to glow red and hope filled the hearts of the five warriors. The region grew brighter and brighter before the branch burst into flames, spreading throughout the whole pile. Everyone began cheering.

"Yeah! Alright then!" shouted Brian, "We'll be warm and dry in no time. Let's get in!"

Together, the five of them had collected a good deal of firewood, and the fire was now big enough for all of them to stand in. They all huddled together within it, savoring the feeling of the warm flames wrapping around their bodies and drying them off.

"This is even better than a nice hot shower!" said Anna.

"I disagree," said Brian, "Nothing will ever beat the feeling of a warm shower for me, but this does come awfully close."

"They're both great ways to relax," said Abbey, taking the middle path.

"So, what's our plan of action?" asked Jake, "How are we going to get back?"

Kayla yawned. "Do we really have to talk about that now?" she asked, "I'm exhausted. As soon as I'm dry, I'm going to sleep. Too bad no one brought a GPS."

Jake was about to mention he had left his on Aeneas's ship but remembered he was still posing as a Carthaginian.

"Does anyone remember the general direction we came from?" asked Brian.

"Arendelle is located on the southern coast of this land," replied Anna, "When the sun rises, we'll know which way is east. Then, we find south and start walking, I guess."

"Ugh, sounds horrible," said Abbey, "How far do you think we are?"

"I have no idea," responded Anna, "The broomstick was going ridiculously fast, and the entire flight took approximately an hour. We're probably quite far from the city. Don't worry. At least it's not winter here."

"Yeah, and at least we have a plan now," said Jake, before yawning, "Ok, I'm going to bed everyone. Good night."

"'Night Jake," said Anna. Jake walked a bit along the beach before lying down on the sand. The water had already begun draining down, and it was just damp now. He closed his eyes and was asleep in an instant. The others remained in the fire before going off one by one to find their own open space on the sand to sleep. In the darkness, the fire burned and crackled brightly for some time before dying down slowly and going out.


	28. Kayla Recites the Annaeid

"Rise and shine everyone!" said Anna, "The sooner we get going, the sooner we're back in Arendelle." It was the early morning, shortly after sunrise. The sky above, so dark and cloudy before, was now as bright and blue as it was the day they first surfaced from the whirlpool.

Jake felt someone kick him lightly on the shoulder. "Come on Jake. Wakey wakey. Come on Brian. Come on Kayla."

Jake opened his eyes and sat up. "Huh?" he thought to himself as he looked around before remembering where he was. The others were also just starting to get up.

"That way is south, said Anna," pointing in the direction of a large mountain range from which the river flowed, let's get walking.

"What? We're heading off now?" asked Kayla.

"Well, what else are we going to do?" asked Anna.

"Good point," replied Kayla, "I'm just not used to starting a long journey through the wilderness within a minute of waking up in the morning." She raised her arms and bend backwards, stretching herself.

Jake, like Anna, was eager to get going."Get up Brian," he said, walking over to him, "Perhaps a little sparring will help you wake up?"

"No, I think I'll save my energy," replied Brian, standing up, "Hopefully we can make it back to Arendelle within a month. I think that's how long a human can last without food."

"Could be, but we can only last a few days without water," said Abbey.

"Shoot!" replied Brian.

"Oh come on guys," said Anna, already beginning to walk away, "The river probably has fresh water. We'll just follow it. Let's go."

The four others began following her, walking in a line with Brian at the back. Although they soon entered the woods, the land was clear of shrubbery by the river, which they walked along. The canopies of the trees over them, however, shielded them from the sun. They had been walking for about an hour when Brian began to sing an old Trojan marching cadence that went like this,

"There was a bear

named Claire

with lots of hair

sitting on a chair

eating a pear

riding a mare

going to the fair

to dare

to stare

at the air

with a glare

and play solitaire"

"STOP IT!" screamed Kayla, as blood flowed from her ears, "What the heck is wrong with you?"

"What?" said Brian, "I'm just trying to lighten the mood a bit and break the monotony of this walking."

"I think you were a bit off key Brian," said Jake.

"Congratulations Jake! Understatement of the year!" said Kayla.

"Ok then, you try to sing," said Brian.

"Nah, I don't feel like it," said Kayla, "Although if you're really bored, I could recite some epic poetry and then we could all try scanning some lines of it afterwards."

"Sure," said Abbey, "Go for it." It was the first time she had spoken all day.

And so Kayla began,

"Ice and a woman I sing - a princess driven on by despair,

she was the first to chase her sister, the queen,

destined to reach an icy palace with slippery floors,

yet many cruel blows her heart took in the meantime,

thanks to Elsa's fear and Hans's greed,

and the entire kingdom by the sea,

was almost frozen over too, before she could find her way,

bring her sister back into the city, establish an ice skating rink,

cause the return of summer, and the cutting of ties with Weselton.

Tell me, Muse, how it all began. Why was Elsa so scared?

What could wound the Queen of Ice, with all her magical power?

Why did she force her sister, so innocent and sweet,

to brave severe weather and fight a giant snow monster?

Can such insanity inflame the minds of magicians?

There was an ancient kingdom held by human settlers,

Arendelle, facing the ocean, beyond which lay the Southern Isles,

The rulers were benevolent, more so than those of all other lands,

Except Corona, which also had a pretty chill king and queen,

They had a daughter, and then another too,

And Arendelle would be the happiest place in the world,

If only Providence would allow it. This was the goal of the rulers,

from the start, and so the two daughters grew up as best friends,

But they heard the oldest daughter, sprung of icy cold,

would one day lose control and endanger her sister,

be overcome with fear, spreading winter far and wide,

fierce in battle, running up stairs of ice in high heels made of ice,

while skipping steps as she moved along,

So the trolls predicted the future would come to pass,

This was the rulers' fear

and they didn't forget the times in the past,

when she had frozen her sister's head,

No, not even now would the reasons for their fright,

their constant anxiety drop from their minds.

They were haunted, with much reason to worry:

the citizens' reaction to Elsa's magic, the lack of tolerance,

for Anna's heart they feared, that it might suffer the same blow as her head,

struck with ice. Their terror ignited by all this,

the rulers of Arendelle kept concealed in her room,

Elsa, master of the powers of ice and winter.

The king and queen kept her far from Anna, forced by her magical powers

to remain behind her doors, year in, year out.

Such a long miserable upbringing she had before her coronation."


	29. Brian Almost Gets Impaled

It was their third day of walking, and the way had been getting steeper and steeper as they approached and made their way up the first of the many mountains they would have to cross on their journey back. Nothing too eventful had happened the first two days. When thirsty, they had drunk water from the river. Twice a day, for lunch and dinner, they caught fish with their weapons and roasted them on sticks. They had decided to do away with breakfast. Early in the morning, they just didn't feel like going through the effort of setting up a fire and catching fish.

So far, the morning had been just like that of the previous two days, and no one in the party had any reason to expect anything different. They were trudging along the river bank, occasionally talking idly and reminding themselves that each step they took was a step closer to Arendelle, and the castle, and all their friends there.

"Whoa!" said Anna as she stumbled and hopped twice on her right foot before regaining her balance. The sound of something heavy came crashing through the bushes and the party barely had time to jump out of the way before a large metal ball studded with spikes swung out from the trees beside them, nearly impaling Abbey as it moved over the river. It then swung back into the trees and proceeded to oscillate back and forth.

"What the heck?" asked Kayla.

"It appears to be some sort of primitive booby trap," said Brian, "I don't know. Maybe for hunting purposes?"

"Well, it was clearly intended to kill something big," said Anna, "I'm not familiar with the large animals of this region so I don't know what. Hopefully, it wasn't meant to kill people."

"Why would anyone want to kill people?" asked Kayla.

"Well," said Anna, "Maybe it was a protective device of some sort - perhaps a leftover trap from some war. Or maybe it was meant as a warning to travelers not to mess around with those living in this region, whoever they might be." The others realized at once the implication that the forest around them was inhabited by intelligent creatures.

"Well, I certainly don't want to meet the people in this region," said Kayla, "They must be absolute barbarians."

"I think that's the point," said Abbey, "We'll have to be very careful now. Everyone listen carefully as we walk and make as little noise as possible. Hopefully, the trap was built out of caution and not hostility."

The metal ball had nearly stopped swinging back and forth. Brian went up to it and examined it. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was not as simple as he had thought. He expected to find it had been made from a cast or something of the sort, but realized that the spikes seemed to be separate from and embedded in the ball. He grabbed a spike and pulled it out.

"What the…?" he thought to himself.

"Well that's a weird way of making a spiked ball," said Kayla.

Brian peered inside the hole in the ball. "Uh, I think there's something inside," he said, beginning to pull out a few more of the spikes and dropping them on the ground. When he had done this a couple of times, he looked in again. "Holy crap," he said.

"What?" asked Kayla, coming over. "Whoa! What is going on in there?"

"Let's get out of here," said Brian, speed walking away, past Anna, and further up the bank. The rest followed silently, worried as they saw the look of fear on Brian's face. Two minutes later he spoke up again.

"It was a series of powerful springs designed to project the spikes out after the ball had swung to its lowest point," he said, "Fortunately for us, the contraption was too rusted to work, or at least work immediately. If it had been a particularly bad day for me, it would have blown up in my face."

"Ok, then, well, I'm sure glad they it didn't," said Abbey.

"Yeah," said Brian, "But we might not be so lucky next time. Be very careful. We are not alone in this forest."


	30. Brian Fails to Make Friends

"What? Why me?" asked Brian nervously.

"You're the least intimidating looking of us all," said Abbey, "Don't worry, we're right behind you."

"Yeah, like fifty yards behind me," said Brian.

"Oh come on, you can take your weapon, as long as you don't have it out," replied Abbey.

The five warriors had spent the morning walking as usual when Anna had noticed a lookout post stationed up ahead of them. It consisted of a large pile of rocks arranged in a semicircle. Inside were two orcs who appeared to be on the verge of falling asleep. They had decided to approach the orcs, hoping to gain information about their whereabouts and the nature of the region. Because they did not want to scare the orcs, they decided that only one from the group should accost them and speak.

"I think Kayla should go," said Brian, "She runs the fastest. If they're not nice orcs, she has the greatest chance of escaping."

"If they're not nice orcs, they would be the ones wanting to escape from me," said Kayla, "Seriously Brian, they're not going to attack you if they don't see a reason to. Now go on…"

"Ugh, fine," said Brian. He began making his way up toward the two lookouts as quietly as he could while the others watched him. None of the lookouts were paying attention. They had their backs leaning against the wall and were facing the opposite direction they were supposed to. Clearly, they were not expecting anything to actually happen, and thus, were slacking off. They did not even notice Brian until he he stood leaning over the barrier of stones.

"Hey…" said Brian hesitantly, "My name is Brian and I just wanted to know if…"

Both orcs opened their eyes, saw Brian, and stood up.

"Intruder!" said one orc, half roaring and half snapping it. He seized a club studded with sharp fragments of obsidian and swung it at the Trojan warrior. Brian, expecting something like this to happen, ducked with ease and moved back.

"Wait, look," said Brian, "I'm not here to hurt you or whatever. I just want directions. Do you think you…"

He stopped speaking as he ducked again. The orc had climbed over the rock wall and was now heading straight for Brian, who was backing away quickly.

"Why are you attacking me?" he said, "What did I do?"

"No one enters the realm of King Barbie with impunity," shouted the orc.

"Your king's name is Barbie?" asked Brian incredulously as he sidestepped another blow. Realizing that the orcs were not very reasonable creatures and had every intent of killing him just for being on their territory, he drew his sword and stabbed the creature. Sickly green blood squirted out of the wound as it collapsed onto the ground. "Whew," thought Brian to himself, who panicked again as he saw the second orc lookout raise a horn to his mouth, about to call for help. Before he could blow on it, a shuriken whizzed through the air and embedded itself in his neck. A moment later, Jake, Kayla, Abbey, and Anna were running up the hill toward him.

"Dude, are you alright?" asked Abbey.

"Yeah, I'm fine," said Brian, "At least for now. Who knows what will happen to us later, once the other orcs find out."

"Well this sucks," said Jake, "What should we do?"

"Maybe hide the bodies," said Kayla, "That way, they may just assume these two fell off a cliff or something."

"No, they would get suspicious," said Anna, "Good grief, how did we wind up in orc territory of all places?"

"Hey, check this out," said Kayla, bending over the body of the orc and ripping something off its armor. It was a black eleven pointed star. "It's the same symbol on the uniform of the leader of the dwarves who attacked us," she said, "Remember?"

"Oh yeah, you're right," said Brian, "What does it mean?"

"I'm not sure," said Kayla, "Well, in any case, what's our plan of action?"

"Maybe sleep during the day and only travel at night?" suggested Anna.

"That sounds horrible," replied Kayla, "I don't want to do that."

"We might have to," said Jake, "That's actually not a bad idea. In any case, we do need to get away from this location fast."

"So, backwards or forwards?" asked Abbey.

"Let's go forward," said Abbey, "I don't want to retrace our steps. Hey, look. She leaned down next to the body of the other orc, picked up a piece of paper, and unfolded it. It's a map," she said with a mild tone of excitement, "Well this will come in useful. Or rather, it would if it made any sense…"

"What do you mean?" asked Anna going over to look at it, "Hmmm, yeah, that is a weird map. Maybe they're trails?"

"Well, they're certainly very complex trails," said Abbey, "Besides, I'm pretty sure the river doesn't branch like that."

"Eh, well, might as well keep it," said Anna, "Let's go guys."

They followed Anna's lead, heading further up the mountain before coming across a cave entrance so well hidden they did not realize it was there until they accidentally walked into it.


	31. They're Inside a Cave Now

"Wow, ok, this is really creepy," said Kayla, "Maybe we should turn around."

"No, I still say we're safer in here," said Jake, "Just try not to get separated. Brian, stop taking selfies of yourself and put the phone away. We need to stay focused."

The five warriors had entered the cave. Upon looking at the map, they realized it showed just a small section of the vast system of caverns within the mountain range. The orcs were seeking to expand its borders, and upon entering further, they expected to hear the sound of hammers on stone. Not all the caverns, it turned out, were artificial. The natural ones were marked with blue lines while the others were marked with red. Even the natural caverns constituted a vast array of passages and blank spots and annotations on the map indicated that much had not yet been explored. The five had decided to make their way to one of these areas of the cave, where they were less likely to run into hostile creatures, and somehow make their way through to the other side.

They had been walking for about half an hour at this point, when they came to a fork in the passage.

"What now?" asked Kayla.

"Let's go right," said Abbey, "It will take us to this area here." She pointed to a large blank spot on the map. It's probably uninhabited. I'd say we could reach it in a few hours walk."

"Alright, sounds good," said Kayla, heading down the right cavern, "We might get there faster if we run though. I have a bad feeling about this place."

"Yeah, except someone would definitely break their ankle," said Abbey, following her. They walked along the path for maybe two minutes or so before she suddenly flicked her wrist, causing the torch she was going to go out. Everyone froze.

"What?" asked Kayla.

"Shhhh, I thought I heard something," said Abbey, "We all need to talk softer." They five of them stood in the darkness, listening intently. Sure enough, they did hear a sound, almost like light thunder, followed by a faint glow in the far distance that seemed to be getting brighter.

"Lets go!" whispered Abbye frantically. The others all turned and began making their way back, stumbling over each other and the rough rocks as they tried to make their way to the entrance. Each tried to keep on hand on the wall to get the direction right.

"Guys, stop!" said Jake. The others turned around.

"Are you crazy?" asked Brian, "Come on!"

"No, we can hide in here," said Jake. The others saw that he was referring to the left passage of the fork they had just passed.

"Oh, that's actually not a bad idea," said Anna, "Come on everyone." They followed Jake and walked a few paces into the left passage before remaining there, listening.

"What if those things are coming down this passage next?" asked Kayla.

"No, I think they're heading toward the entrance," said Jaka, "Just listen."

Soon, the rumbling sound was heard again. As it got closer, they realized that a large cart of some sort was being pushed. Those pushing it were conversing with each other. From their voices, the five warriors realized it was a mixed group of dwarves and orcs, along with one other creature whose voice was unfamiliar to most of them.

"It's a troll," said Anna.

The light at the opening of the passage where it split from the right passage was getting brighter and brighter. Soon, it was close enough to hear what they were saying.

"I'll say," said a dwarf, "At this rate, we'll have the parvatron set up in no time at all. His majesty will be delighted."

"Indeed he will be," said another dwarf, "Right now, they're just expanding the chamber of corruption. It's not big enough to hold all those geodes. Ugh, this this is quite heavy. We'll need to grease the wheels when we get back."

"Is it just me, or has his majesty not seemed quite himself lately?" asked an orc.

"Yeah, a lot of people are saying that," said the first dwarf, "It's like he's frustrated about something and more irritable than usual. Just don't get on his bad side. Then again, that's always good advice."

"And the special forces?" asked another orc.

"What about them?" asked a dwarf.

"I heard units are being sent out quite often these days, although no one knows why," said the orc, "At least no one at our level does."

"Perhaps it's to kidnap Taylor Swift. I heard morale among the workers has fallen to an all time low because of the dark and dusty working conditions in the caves. Maybe he wants to hold a concert?"

"I serious doubt it," said an dwarf, "Taylor Swift is terrible. I don't see how making the workers deaf would increase their morale."

Upon hearing this, Jake drew his sword and charged the group before wildly slicing and hacking in all directions. Thirty seconds later, the troll, the dwarves, and the orcs lay dead at his feet.

"Jake!" shouted Anna, "What did you do that for?"

"NO ONE INSULTES TAYLOR SEIFT!" shouted Jake.

"Hey author, you spelled her name wrong in the last sentence," said Brian

"Sorry about that. The "E" key is right next to the "W" key and I hit it by accident," said the author.

"Why don't you just change it?" asked Abbey.

"I don't feel like it," replied the author.

"Have you no self control?" asked Anna to Jake, "Now look what you've done! As soon as someone comes across this mess, everyone in this mountain rage will know there are intruders." She was quite furious at this point, and steam was literally pouring out of her ears.

She began walking toward Jake, ready to choke him. Jake, scared out of his life, took off running down the right passage with Anna close behind, followed by the others as they tried to restrain her.


	32. Falling

"Oh, so that's why there's a giant blank spot on the map," said Jake, "Go figure!"

The five warriors were standing in front of an enormous abyss, each wondering wondering what their next course of action should be. In the dim torchlight, the opposite side could not be seen. Brian picked up an enormous boulder that would have been hard for twelve normal men to lift and tossed it down. They all waited, listening to hear it knock against the floor below, but heard nothing.

"What is this?" asked Kayla, "Freaking Tartarus?"

"Might as well be," said Abbey, "Well, I guess there's nothing else to do but turn around and re-plan our route."

"Yeesh, looks like we're not going to be getting back to Arendelle any time soon, if ever," said Jake.

"Oh don't be so pessimistic Jake," replied Anna, "We'll make it through all this. This mountain is full of passages, so it won't be hard for us to find another… Brian! Get back!"

"I'm just trying to see what's over the edge. Abbey, bring the torch over here," he said.

"Trust me, you're not going to find anything," replied Abbey, "It's too deep. BRIAN!"

"WHAAAA!" screamed Brian as he slipped. For a moment, he stood waving his arms, precariously balanced on the edge. Kayla ran over and grabbed him but he was too heavy. A second later, both disappeared over the edge, into the darkness.

"Kayla!" shouted Abbey as she leapt over the edge, hoping to catch up to her friend.

"Brian!" shouted Jake, as he leapt over as well. In their panic, they had overlooked the fact that jumping in with them wouldn't really help them, and that they were all kind of doomed now.

"Hey, wait for me!" shouted Anna, as she too plunged into the abyss.

Falling down the enormous hole was a surreal experience. Fifty yards or so below him, Jake could see the faint light of Abbey's torch. He did not even feel like he was falling. He felt weightless and perfectly at ease. Remembering the importance of keeping the group together though, he called out to Abbey, as well as to Brian and Kayla, whom he couldn't see.

"Guys!" Wait up!" he shouted.

"How the heck do we do that?" shouted Brian back, "We don't exactly have wings."

"Jake and Brian, position yourself so that you're horizontal and spread out your arms and legs!" shouted Anna from above all of them, "Abbey, position yourself so you're vertical and like a pencil. The lack of air resistance will allow you to catch up with Kayla and Brian. When you get to their level, then change your position to theirs'. Jake and I will do the same."

It was a brilliant plan, although the catching up process was slow. Kayla had to repeatedly call out to the others so they didn't accidentally pass her by. Five minutes later, Anna had descended down to them. They were all now close by each other and falling at the same velocity.

"Wow, I never realized falling to your death could be this fun!" giggled Kayla, as she began dizzying series of somersaults in the air.

"Ugh, not this again," said Abbey.

"Come on, try to have some fun before you die. WHEEEEE!" .

"Haha, yeah, you're right. This is fun," said Brian. A minute later, they were all laugh and rolling around in the air, doing everything they couldn't do while gravity was turned on. Technically, gravity was still turned on, but anyone who has ever taken a physics class will realize that the sensation of weight is caused by the normal force of a surface pressing against your body. In free fall, there is not ground or floor to provide this normal force and therefore, you feel weightless. In other words, it felt just like they were floating around in space.

"Wow, it feels just like we're floating around in space!" said Jake.

"That's because we are floating around in space!" responded Abbey.

"Haha, that would be cool," said Kayla.

"No, I'm serious, look at all the stars around us!" replied Abbey.

"What the…" thought Brian aloud. They others were equally baffled.

"Ummm, what is going on?" asked Kayla, "I'm so confused. Why are we flying toward a bunch of stars. What is going on?!"

"I have no idea!" said Abbey, "We seem to be beyond physics at this point. Oh, wait, why do I have the feeling we're not flying toward the stars, but the stars are flying toward us?"

Before anyone could answer, the thousands of brilliant lights surrounding them converged upon them. Though they all closed their eyes, but the bright flash of light shone through their eyelids and they could clearly make out hundreds of hypnotic swirls of color. Everyone was screaming. Suddenly, there was a huge explosion as they were tossed upward into the air.


	33. This Place Is Weird

"Ooomph!"

Jake gasped, trying to breathe after having his breath knocked out of him. He opened his eyes, looking around, and found himself laying on the hard pavement of city street. A second later, he heard a loud thud as Brian landed beside him, followed by Abbey.

"So, we're alive, eh?" asked Brian.

"Um, I think," said Kayla, who had been the first to land, "Where are we though?"

"Aaaauugh!" came a shout as Anna flew out of a hole in the ground and landed by them. The group was together again.

"What is that thing?" asked Brian, going over.

"Looks like a manhole," said Abbey, "Oh wait, it is a manhole. Did we all come out of there?"

"You all did," replied Kayla, "I'm assuming I did too."

"Geez, well this certainly complicates things even more!" said Anna, "Will we ever get back to Arendelle, or Carthage, or in the case of you two, the United States?"

"We are in the United States," said Abbey, "At least I think we are. Look!" She pointed at a nearby building, upon which flew an American flag - a tattered one, that is. One that seemed to be colored with different shades of brown at this point rather than red, white, and blue.

"Wow, what is going on here?" asked Kayla, looking around. This looks like a nuclear wasteland.

"I don't think so," said Abbey, "If it were, all the buildings would be , it doesn't look inhabited" They were clearly standing in the midst of a modern city, though one that seemed to have been abandoned at some point. The streets were clearly not maintained, windows were shattered, and the cars scattered around the area were rusted and falling apart.

"This is bad! This is really bad!" shouted Jake, grabbing his hair and nearly tearing it all off.

"It's alright Jake, we're going to be fine," said Anna, "Oh wait, no we're not. Everyone run!" She grabbed Kayla and and Jake's hands and dragged them behind her as she sprinted off down the street.

"Huh?" thought Brian to himself, before seeing the enormous shadow of some sort of vile beast behind him. Without turning around, he and Abbey took off running behind the others.

"It's gaining on us!" shouted Abbey, what do we do?" Curious, she glanced backwards and saw that the creature was an enormous slug.

"AH! Watch out for the heads, you two!" shouted Kayla.

Abbey was about to ask what she meant by that before almost tripping on a head. As it turned out, just as they were about to pass a building, five zombies had jumped out at them from behind a corner. In less than a second, Kayla had drawn her katana, sliced their heads off, and sheathed it in one fluid motion. The bodies had not yet fallen to the ground, causing Abbey to nearly collide with one.

"Wait guys, I'm going to try something," said Anna. She turned around, let go of Jake's hand, reached into her purse, pulled out a salt shaker, unscrewed the lid, and threw it at the giant slug. As the salt shaker spun through the air, it's contents spilled out, sprinkling over the slug, which let out an ear splitting shriek as it shrivelled down to the size of a raisin and died.

"Nice!" said Brian, "Uh, why do you have a salt shaker in your purse?"

"I have everything in my purse!" said Anna, "Onions, tomatoes, pencils, money, green beans, car keys, vacuum cleaners, forks, T.V. remotes, thimbles, copies of the Aeneid, popsicles, extra batteries for my flashlight, Victor's statistics textbook, some windows, a violin, several space shuttles…"

"Whoa! Look out! More of them!" screamed Abbey.

"What?! more giant slugs?" asked Anna, turning around, "Oh, more of those. Where are all these zombies coming from?"

"I don't know, nor do I really want to!" said Jake, "But that's way too many to fight. Come on!" He ran to the nearest building and pulled on the door. It didn't budge.

"It's locked!" he said, exasperated.

"It looks like it's just really rusty," said Brian, "Maybe you're not pulling hard enough. He seized the door and pulled as hard as he could. With a screech, it began opening slowly before popping outward and nearly throwing Brian backward. "Hurry, let's go in!" he shouted.

They didn't need him to tell them what to do. All immediately rushed in and slammed the door shut behind them. In the distance, they heard the faint moan of a chorus of voices - "EEEAAAAARRRRSSSS"


	34. The Battle at the Mall: Part I

"What do we do?!" asked Abbey, "Do we fight them here or what?"

They five friends stood in front of the door, watching as an enormous horde of zombies slowly approached it. They were in a Macy's that was part of a larger mall.

"I doubt they'll be able to get in through that door," said Brian nervously. They all huddled together. The sight of the army of the undead coming closer and closer was by far the creepiest thing any of them had ever seen.

"Yeah, they're slow and probably not very bright," said Anna, "You know that old question about how many six year olds you could take down in a fight before getting overwhelmed? Well it's just like that."

The first zombie reached the door and slammed its decaying palms against it, causing them all to jump. Soon, all the rest of the zombies were doing the same.

"See, they're pushing against the door and not pulling it," said Jake, "There's nothing to worry about."

A second later, Jake found out just how wrong he was. The hinges of the door were quite rusted away, and the force of hundreds of zombies pushing against it cause it to pop inward, releasing the horde into the building. Brian immediately began screaming.

Still, the horror of the situation was not enough to incapacitate them. Immediately, rotting heads and limbs were flying everywhere as they drew their swords and hacked about wildly. Still, the horde was just too big, and they soon found themselves retreating steadily, overwhelmed by the onslaught.

"Watch out guys, there's a checkout counter behind us!" shouted Brian.

Kayla looked around quickly and saw that Brian was right. "Let's go right," she said, "It'll probably lead us to the interior of this place."

"Do you think we should all go into one of the changing rooms or a bathroom and blockade the door?" asked Jake, impaling a particularly muscular zombie with his Carthaginian sword.

"Jake, that is the absolute worst idea I have ever heard," said Anna, "We have to get to the space between the different stores. You know, it's where all the escalators and stuff are. I have no idea what it's called, and google won't tell me."

Swordfighting is more than just a system of cuts, blocks, and footwork. It is an art, and like all arts, requires a certain amount of intuition Jake, having been a warrior for quite some time now, had developed this intuition. Facing forward, he sensed the presence of an enemy behind him and without missing a beat, swung around and sliced through a zombie that was just about to take a bite out of his shoulder.

"OH MY GOODNESS! We're surrounded!" shouted Jake. Somehow, the zombies must have gotten in through another entrance, and were heading in a huge hoard down an aisle, knocking over clothing displays as they came.

"Ok, whatever. It's every turtle for itself now!" said Kayla, "Just try to make your way out of this place to a clearing where we can regroup.

If the situations wasn't chaos before, it was now. The five of them blindly sliced right and left, determined to cut through the legions of hideous attackers pouring in from all sides. The stench of the rotting bodies was unbearable. In addition, each had to keep from tripping over the growing number of limbs, heads, and bodies that were lying on the floor as they killed more and more of the enemy.

"Ah!" shouted Anna as she accidentally dropped her sword. An enormous tiger zombie, evidently a resident at the city's zoo back when things were normal, charged toward her. Thinking fast, she seized the computer sitting on the checkout counter and hurled it at the creature. It slammed into its face, smashing it inward. Immediately, the Carthaginian queen retrieved her sword with a rather elegant somersault, leapt into the air, and decapitated the tiger with a blood curdling battle cry.

The others, meanwhile, were all out of breath, struggling to keep the invading horde at bay. With a hefty struggle, they fought their way to the exit of Macy's and began running.

"Where are we going?" asked Jake.

"I don't know, how about the food court," said Brian, "I'm starving."

"What?!" asked Anna incredulously, "That can't be right. In times of high stress, your sympathetic nervous system shuts down your digestive system so your whole body can focus on more important things like not getting killed."

"Well, it probably would be a good idea to get to the second floor though," said Jake, "Come on. The escalators are up ahead. Ugh, Brian, what are you doing? There's no time for that."

"Relax. Those things aren't exactly Olympic runners," said Brian, as he pulled a quarter out of his wallet and inserted it into a gumball machine. "Besides, I like having something to chew on while I'm anxious or nervous about something."

The four of them watched, exasperated, as the gumball began to spiral down the tube before finally reaching the little door at the bottom where Brian took it out and ate it.

"Ok, come on, let's go," said Abbey. Despite the past ten minutes of fighting, they had barely put a dent into the horde, and the crowd of zombies headed toward them, just as dense as before. Disheartened at the sight, the five warriors turned around and ran.


	35. The Battle at the Mall: Part II

"Oh my gosh! What's going on, you guys?" said a voice.

Kayla and Jake were the first two to reach the second floor, stepping out of the escalator and seeing Zack, Jason, and Evan, walking towards them.

"Really? You're going to ask us what's going on?" said Jake, "We're probably more confused than you are."

The other three had reached the second floor as well. "Hey Brian," said Zack, "What's up?"

"There's zombies. A lot of them," said Brian, still somewhat out of breath.

"Yeah, we know," replied Zack, "That's why we're here. I decided to take a vacation from Blobland, but unfortunately, a zombie apocalypse happened and prevented me from returning. We've all been hiding from them in this mall for about two months now."

"No, they're in the building," said Kayla, "We attracted them here by accident because we had no idea what was happening."

It took a moment for Kayla's words to register in the minds of their new acquaintances. Jason's face went noticeably paler. In the distance on the floor below them, they heard the muffled footsteps of animated corpses coming closer.

"Ok, first of all, where the heck are we? Second of all, why are there zombies?" asked Jake, exasperated.

"This is New York," said Jason, "As for the zombies, well, we're not exactly sure how that all happened. They go around trying to eat peoples ears for some reason. Civilization collapsed about three months ago. Like Zack said, several of us have just been hiding in this mall for a while, waiting for the zombies to all die from lack of food or something. I don't know."

"Well, hopefully we don't all become food for them," said Anna thoughtfully as she observed the approaching horde from above.

"Quick! Barricade the escalators!" said Evan, "Guys, come on!" They all followed him as he ran off to a furniture store. Together, they teamed up to move several large sofas in front of the escalators, hoping they would slow the advancement of the zombie army if they failed to keep them at bay. There were two escalators criss crossing each other - one for ascending to the second floor and another for descending to the first floor. Neither were functional, and were pretty much stairs.

"Ok, here's the plan," said Zack, "Half of us will guard each escalator. We'll just keep killing the zombies as they come up until…"

"Until what?" asked Jake.

"Well, I don't know, until they're all gone, I suppose," said Zack. "Kayla, Abbey, Jason, and Brian, go to the other escalator. Hurry! They're coming."

The first of the zombies entered the descending escalator and began moving upward. It was a large elephant zombie, followed by a menagerie of other zombie animals. The army was roughly split in half between animals and humans. Whatever had zombified the creatures of the land in the first place had affected all equally.

"What do we do?" asked Kayla.

"Goodness, that's a lot more than I expected," said Jason, "Hold on, can one of you guys go find us some ammo?"

"What do you mean?" asked Brian.

As the first elephant zombie was halfway up the escalator, Jason raised a nerf gun he was holding and fire it. The nerf dart flew as straight as Apollo's arrow, striking the decaying body of the elephant and exploding. Zombie elephant pieces went flying everywhere, and the force of the blast set the zombie behind it tumbling back down to the bottom. The zombies, however, immediately began their ascent again.

"Hold on a sec," said Abbey, "Let them come."

"Why?" asked Jason.

A fast moving jaguar with its skin hanging off of it was now three fourths of the way up. Suddenly, Abbey raised an enormous television over her head and flung it down the escalator, knocking all the zombies down with it. "Jason, kill the big ones," she said, "Brian and Kayla, go get more stuff to throw down."

Brian and Kayla ran off, returning with chairs, pianos, refrigerators, sewing machines, and printers, all taken from various stores around the mall. Meanwhile, each time the zombie army tried to ascend, Abbey would knock them down by throwing something down the escalator. Knocking the zombies down in this way, however, didn't kill them. Whenever a large mass of zombies had accumulated at the bottom of the escalator, Jason would fire a few nerf darts into the crowd.

"Hey guys!" called Jake from across the hall, "Why don't we just destroy the escalators? Wouldn't that be a whole lot easier?"

"Good point," said Jason, "Does anyone have any objections?"

No one did. Jason and Zack fired their nerf guns into their respective escalators. The rapid series of explosions from the exploding nerf darts forced the others to cover their ears. With a loud crash, both escalators crashed onto the floor below.

"Ok, so now what do we do?" asked Evan.

"We just keep firing at them, I guess," said Zack, "Oh wait, what the heck?"

The others had also seen what Zack saw - a number of the zombies were now carrying ladders toward the the rail. There was a harsh clash as the metal of one ladder struck the rail and a zombie began climbing up.

"Crap, I forgot there's a ladder store downstairs. Quick, throw them off!" said Zack. As the zombies attempted to set up more ladders and climb to the second floor, the eight of them frantically ran around knocking the ladders down and hurling all sorts of projectiles at the undead attackers. Freezers, expensive china, chandeliers, bean bags, printers, tennis rackets, and any other hard object you could conceivably buy at a mall all rained down, crushing the zombies. Jake and Brian were experts at this sort of thing, having spent many hours hurling javelins down at Greek armies from the walls of Troy. Still, despite the incredible fitness of all involved, they eventually began to tire. The onslaught of zombies pouring out of the entrance to the Macy's in the distance, however, continued on, stable as a river.

Five minutes later, a large grizzly bear zombie with polka dotted fangs climbed over the railing. Zack gave it a hard punch it in the solar plexus before seizing it and throwing it over the edge. At the same time, however, a parrot and two human zombies climbed onto the floor, but were shredded to ribbons by Kayla's katana. With a spinning hook kick, she knocked down another ladder, just as a decaying flamingo was about to step off. Likewise, an enormous salmon that had swum up a ladder was immediately decapitated by one of Abbey's shurikens upon lifting its head above the second floor.

Still, the eight of them were outnumbered, and the zombies continued to take the second floor by storm. Slowly, they found themselves being pressed further and further back.


	36. The Battle at the Mall: Part III

"We have to destroy those ladders," said Jake as he sliced through the torso of a zombie.

"There's too many," said Zack, breathing heavily, "We can only retreat now." As he spoke, he nearly tripped on the still squirming body of a zombie moose that Abbey had beheaded earlier.

"No, guys, look!" said Brian. The Trojan warrior came running up to them, triumphantly holding a Star Destroyer he had found in a spaceship shop. "We'll just fly down and blow up the ladder store. Problem solved!"

"Wow, that's a great idea!" said Zack, "Uh, how do you drive that thing?"

"I have no idea," replied Brian, "But I'm sure I'll figure it out at some point. Come on in guys!"

The eight of them all jumped into the Star Destroyer. Brain sat in the cockpit, started the engine, and with a mighty roar, the enormous vehicle rose into the air.

"Go forward over the railing and then down," said Jason, "The ladder store is right by the piano store."

"I'm trying to," said Brian, ""Where's the piano store?"

"Its by the Frozen merchandise store," replied Jason, "There's a giant statue of Elsa holding a chainsaw right next to the door. You can't miss it.

"Alright, I think I've got this thing figured out," said Brian. The enormous craft shot forward at the speed of light, crashing through the wall and barreling through the air while creating a sonic boom that blew the moon into Jupiter, giving it a second great red spot. "Aaaauugh!" he screamed, before slamming on the breaks. The sudden stop knocked them all off their feet.

"Ugh, ok, not that fast Brian," said Kayla, "Whoa, is that the Eiffel tower?"

"Yes, it is," said Jake, "Brian, you went way too far. Put this thing in reverse and go back to the mall in New York."

Brian turned a knob and once more pressed the gas pedal. This time, they went backwards much slower. So slow, in fact, that it took them two whole minutes to fly backward across the Atlantic Ocean and through the hole in the wall the had left upon leaving it.

"Ok, now descend and turn ninety degrees to the left," said Jason.

Brian did as he was told and saw the enormous statue of Elsa his friend had spoken of earlier. Two stores down from it was a small shop with thousands of zombies pouring out of it, all carrying ladders.

"Oh, I see," said Brian. He pressed a small black button in front of him. There was a faint humming sound and then a small blast as two proton missiles fired from a cannon located just beneath the cockpit. They all held their breath as they watched the fiery projectiles dart toward the target, hoping they would do their job. Unfortunately, the southwest wind blew strongly before they were halfway to their target, causing them to fly off course into a JCPenney located farther down. There was a bang and a burst of light, followed by the charred remains of clothing flying out what remained of the door.

"The wind's too strong; I'm going to move closer," said Brian. He flew forward again, simultaneously gunning down a dozen zombies with the ship's lasers. When he was twenty yards away from the store, he fired another pair of proton missiles. This time, both flew straight through the door.

"Yes! Got it!" said Brian, "Should we fly back to the second floor?"

"Wait, why isn't anything happening?" asked Abbey. They all waited, listening for the sound and sight of the store exploding, but it never came.

"Ugh, what now?" asked Brian, "You know what? That's really weird. Let me try something." He lowered the Star Destroyer until it was the same level as the store's door, and before the others could object, flew forward straight through the entrance. Once inside, they realized what had gone wrong.

The inside of the store was HUGE! They flew into a vast expanse of space. Ladders were everywhere. Some had wings and were flying around. Others were sitting on benches, chatting with fellow ladder friends. Here and there, they caught sight of a few ladder couples making out with each other. In addition to these strange happenings, there were several large clusters of ladders that took on the form of whirling tornadoes. Ladders were constantly joining and leaving these enormous complexes. Abbey laughed as she watched a group of teenage ladders in the distance playing a game of flag football.

"Wow, that's a really expensive ladder," said Evan, looking at the price tag of one as it drove by in its minivan. It was made completely of gold, with a vast array of jewels decorating its rims.

"Oh my goodness, I want a ladder just like that for my castle in Carthage!" said Anna.

"Where did all these ladders come from?" asked Kayla, "This is ridiculous!"

"That!" said Zack, pointing up ahead at a brilliant point in the distance, "They seem to be coming from there."

Brian stomped on the gas pedal and the Star Destroyer headed off toward whatever it was, meanwhile dodging ladders of all sizes and colors as they headed toward it.

"What is that?!" exclaimed Abbey in bewilderment. None of the folks on board had ever seen anything like it. It was an enormous spinning vortex of of blinding light that was throwing out thousands of ladders a second from deep within.

"Oh my gods and goddesses, how does this not break the law of the conservation of matter?" asked Anna, "Surely the matter to make these ladders cannot be appearing out of nowhere."

"It's a white hole that's been programmed to create ladders," said Evan, "The matter is coming from a black hole in another universe and being spit out of this white hole. As for how a white hole can be programmed in this way, I'm at a loss to explain it."

"Magic!" said Zack, "And very advanced magic at that. Does anyone know how to stop it?"

"Yeah, you just paint it black and it turns into a black hole," said Jason, "I'll do it. I'm artist. Just provide me with the materials."

Immediately, everyone except Brian ran through the Star Destroyer collecting black paint and paintbrushes. Jason then grabbed six large buckets of paint with his hands and 8 paintbrushes between his teeth before opening the door and leaping out toward the white hole. As he neared it, he stuck a foot out to prevent himself from smashing into it face first and began painting.

"I think it's working!" said Zack, "Whew! For a moment I thought we were all screwed."

"Actually, from the looks of it, we still might be screwed," said Abbey, "Or at least Jason might be." They all saw what she was referring to. The ladders, realizing what Jason was trying to do, had stopped their careless loitering about and where now swarming around Jason, ready to dive in for the kill. Jake closed his eyes. Although he had fought in many battles before on the plains of Troy, the sight of Jason being ripped to pieces and battered to a pulp by sentient ladders was just too much for him. Just as they were all convinced Jason was lost to them, the familiar sound of the ships laser rang through the air as Brian began gunning down the ladders.

"Oh, right I forgot about those," said Kayla, "Yay!"

Brian opened the window of the cockpit. "Don't worry Jason, I've got you covered," he called.

"Thanks man!" shouted Jason as he continued to paint with the paintbrushes in his mouth. It took him a little over five minutes for him to cover the entire white hole, turning it into a black hole that now began to suck in all the ladders.

"Why isn't Jason being sucked in as well?" asked Jake.

"The white hole only threw out ladders," said Zack, "So in its black hole form, it makes sense that it would only suck in ladders as well. Either way, we don't have to worry about them anymore."

Kayla opened up the door to the Star Destroyer and threw a rope out to Jason, who used it to pull himself back into the spacecraft. Then, congratulating each other with a job well done, they flew out the door and back to the second floor, which had been completely overrun by zombies while they had been shutting down the ladder store.


	37. The Battle at the Mall: Part IV

Brian lowered the Star Destroyer to the ground of the second floor and shut off its engines, having destroyed the remaining ladders with the craft's lasers. "Well," he asked, "What do we do now?"

It was a good question, and one no one quite knew the answer to yet. The second floor was swarming with zombies, and they were all quite tired from all the fighting they had already done.

"I guess there's nothing else to do but clear the floor," said Jake as he sipped a Diet Coke, "Too bad we can't use the Star Destroyer's lasers without destroying the whole floor in the process."

Zack sighed. "You mean we actually have to go out again and fight?" he asked, "Ugh! Why did civilization have to fall? This is going to take forever!"

"There's really no other option," said Anna, "Everyone draw your weapons. Let's go."

"No, wait, I have an idea," said Kayla, "There was a book in the Arendelle library about necromancy. It was a fairly advanced textbook on the subject, but I might be able to pull off one of the more basic spells."

She opened the door and stepped out, walking a few paces outward before stretching out her hands. She closed her eyes and began to focus on her breathing, shifting her awareness deeper and deeper inward. Before long, she was in a state of trance, having no sensation of time or space. Her consciousness transcended the boundaries of the physical plane, and connected with the astral environment of the mall. Her heartbeat and breath slowed as she became more and more relaxed. She no longer heard the sounds of the zombies behind her or smelled the foul odor of their rotting bodies. Having firmly established herself between the spirit world and the physical world, she began to chant.

"Micama! goho pe iad! Zodir com-selahe azodien biabe oslondohe. Norezoda cahisa otahila gigipahe; vaunudel-cahisa tapuime qomospelehe telocahe; quinu toltoregi cahisa i cahisaji em ozodien; dasata beregida od toreodul!"

Kayla's aura cracked with a deep shade of Prussian blue, glowing with such intensity that even the untrained eyes of the others on the Star Destroyer could see the ghostly field of light around her. Although her chanting was clearly her own, her voice was deeper and stronger than usual, such that the air and the building itself seemed to vibrate along with it. From the floor began to rise all the shades of those who had ever been buried beneath the mall. All manner of animals arose, as well as hundreds of humans, mostly from various Native American tribes that had wandered through or lived in the region. After a few minutes had passed, the shades of more archaic creatures arose from the underworld. A swarm of dragonflies flew up from the floor as well as a pack of velociraptors, followed by twenty seven brontosauruses and fifteen penguins wearing boxing gloves. Also, there was a platypus.

Back on the Star Destroyer, the others watched in awe as Kayla called forth her phantom army - enough to rival the zombie army they were currently under siege from. Then, singing another incantation, she commanded them to attack.

It was a frightening sight at first, seeing an army of shades attack an army of zombies, but the screams and blood and flying guts normally associated with battle were not present. Right in front of the window, the shade of a squirrel scratched at a zombie whale, only to have its paw go right through. All around, the same thing was happening as the spears, fangs, claws, and stingers of the awakened shades passed through their targets without doing damage. At that moment, Abbey remembered what the Duke of the Satanic Monkeys had taught her.

"Kayla!" she called out, "Spirits can't hurt physical creatures without first adopting physical forms themselves."

"Huh?" said Kayla, confused. Suddenly, as she looked around, she saw what Abbey meant. "Hmmm," she thought to herself. Immediately, an idea struck her like lightning, and with a wave of her hand, she ordered all the shades to fly into a Build-A-Bear Workshop down the hall and possess a bear inside. They followed her command, rushing into the store. A few seconds later, hundreds of teddy bears poured out the doors, animated by the spirits of the dead.

"Wow!" said Brian, "That has to be the creepiest thing I've ever seen."

There were all manner of bears. There were happy bears, sad bears, enthusiastic bears, solid bears, liquid bears, green bears, gaseous bears, thirsty bears, wooden bears, cold bears, tall bears, three legged bears, funny bears, adulterous bears, intelligent bears, inspirational bears, healthy bears, and bears choking on rice among them. Some were armored with chainmail, others with plate armor, and a few with leather armor. They carried with them a great assortment of weapons - gladiuses, katanas, rapiers, spears, polearms, estocs, broadswords, cutlasses, kamas, sais, tonfas, and green beans to name a few.

Sweat ran down Kaylas face as she struggled to keep them under her control. The energy required to do this came from her Prussian blue aura, which was now considerably dimmer. Taking a deep breath, she reissued the command to attack.

As one body, the teddy bears swarmed outward and began hacking away at the zombies. Blades flashed and spears flew through the air as the zombies fell by the dozen.

"Well won't this be fun cleaning up," said Anna sarcastically, wrinkling her nose as a zombies arm rolled right under the Star Destroyer's window.

Kayla was really struggling now. Her eyes now glowed as well with the color of her aura as she made a series of gestures with her hands, creating a field of power that strengthened a slightly outnumbered regiment of teddy bears fighting in the entrance of a shoe shop. Her legs weakened under the effort, and she began to sway back and forth, doing her best to remain conscious as long as possible as the army of teddy bears fought the zombies. Just before blacking out, she planned to recite the dismissal and banish the shades back to the Underworld before they would turn on her, as shades are wont to do to those who disturb their peaceful sleep. She miscalculated her strength, however, and just as she opened her mouth, everything went black.

"Kayla!" screamed Abbey as she saw the aura of her friend flicker out. She leapt out of the Star Destroyer and caught her as she fell backwards. As she did so, Kayla's eyes open again as her aura flared up like a Prussian blue sun, nearly blinding everyone who looked upon her. Abbey felt an enormous surge of power flow from the crystal ear in her pocket through her body and into Kayla, strengthening and and energizing her. So strong was the force provided by that mysterious object that even the teddy bears under her control began to glow blue. Over the course of the next hour, the teddy bears cleared the mall of all zombies, killing them and dragging their bodies far outside the mall. When this had been done, Kayla ordered them back into the Build-A-Bear Workshop before releasing the shades that animated them.


	38. A Profound Conversation

During this entire time, Casey and Marisa were in the food court eating edible things. Had they known there was a zombie invasion, they would have gladly helped, but for some reason, neither Zack, Jason, nor Evan remembered to get them. Thus, having nothing better to do, they sat down and chatted.

"Man, we've been stuck here for what, two months now?" asked Casey, stabbing an eggroll with her fork, "Do you think things will ever go back to normal?"

Marisa sighed. "I don't know," she said, "If it does, it won't be for a while."

"Maybe things are already back to normal?" said Casey, "Or maybe they never got abnormal in the first place. You know how it is."

"What do you mean?" asked Marisa, opening a ketchup packet for her tater tots. "Do you mean to say at this point, we might as well call hiding in a mall from zombies normal?"

"No," said Casey, "I was referring to linear time being an illusion. There is no past and no future. There is only now, which intersects with the singularity we consider our consciousness."

"I had a vision of eternity once," said Marisa, "I saw the point of space time as a whole. All of time and space filled my awareness."

"Whoa, what happened?" asked Casey, sipping some chicken noodle soup which she had bought from McDonalds.

"I went insane," replied Marisa, "I was taken to a mental asylum. They put me in a straightjacket. You see, I had this APUSH test and they asked me what the date was of the inauguration of Severus Snape. Well, after that experience, I realized that all dates were one date and all moments were one moment, and that just as a diamond prism reflects a certain aspect of light, so does the human consciousness reflect a certain aspect of the eternal moment. Therefore, whenever I am asked when something happened, whether in the reign of Washington or Bush, I always reply 'now,' because all moments of time are contained in the present."

"You've crossed the abyss that is the illusion of spatial-temporal separation," said Casey, "You need to stablize the bridge so you can shift gears between your meditational trance and your everyday awareness. I'm not sure how though"

"Oh I've been thinking about it," said Marisa, "Thunderstorms are nice. I spoke with one about a week and a half ago actually. He had a pretty gruff voice, and I asked him a bit about the nature of the various forms of tension between charges that work together to form lightening as well as the equivalent forms of this tension within the personalities of human beings and society at large. In addition, we spoke about utilizing lightening to overcome barriers and cross the various abysses that manifest at all levels of life."

As if in reply to Marisa, a roar that sounded like thunder filled the air.

"Huh, looks like we're in for quite a storm," said Marisa.

"Yeah, but then again, it's not like we're ever leaving this building again. At least not while the zombies are out there." As she spoke, Casey's eyes grew melancholy as she realized she might never again see the beloved sky or feel the sun on her face without getting her ears chewed off by the living dead. Unbeknownst to both of them, the sound was not thunder, but the JCPenney downstairs blowing up after Brian accidentally fired two proton torpedoes into it.

"You know," said Casey, still thinking about the natural world she considered lost to her, "When I focus on my breath while meditating, I'll often get random visions of the sky, as well as a sensation of the perfect clarity of the air in the upper atmosphere. Sometimes, if I begin to contemplate the image, I'll begin to feel I actually am the sky, haha, and I'll get with it a sensation of detached joy that I feel is probably something similar to the state of mind Buddha lived his life in. Like, my awareness just kind of stretches to infinity without end and is able to contain within itself any storm or hurricane without being bothered. It's nice to try to recreate the sensation in everyday life if I feel particularly stressed. If I become like the sky, then everything that's bothering me just passes through me without changing or affecting me and I can see everything objectively from a bigger picture. Sometimes, if things are really bad, I'll make use of the night sky and think about those regions between the stars where you can stare into infinity. People often come up with constellations based on the stars but the other day, I was trying to come up with a few constellations based on the points of darkness between the stars and I came up with several, including one that looked like a very angry flash drive."

"The night sky has many mysteries of its own," replied Marisa, "Those who know the secrets of Magistra's Car Tire may direct the rays of that most potent of constellations to sink entire continents, but this is very advanced magic. Sometimes, if I stare too long into the darkness while taking a walk at night, like I used to do quite often before civilization ended, I'll become absorbed into it and lose myself and then, it's like my awareness is completely formless and I consist of nothing but emptiness and nothing exists but emptiness and neither space nor time are relevant or even exist and I could remain in this state forever until I fall down and my rib slams against the sidewalk because I am so out of it these days and then I have to think really hard to remember where I am and what direction I have to travel to get to my house. But yeah, as far as your meditation goes, technically, all those images and sensations are distractions. I mean, it's nice, but you're supposed to remain focused on the physical feeling of your breath, so whenever that happens to me, I'll force my mind back to counting, inhaling for four heartbeats, holding for four heartbeats, exhaling for four heartbeats, and holding again for four heartbeats but then, when I focus on my heartbeats, which I use to count the length my breaths and retentions, my mind immediately turns also to my blood and the various arteries and veins that run through my body and, just like when I focus on my kidneys when practicing body awareness, I'll start to feel as if my blood vessels are the rivers and streams of the world that flow not just through space but through time as well just like how Lao Tzu describes the Tao in the Tao Te Ching or that all fluids in my body constitute a vast ocean with no shores and I will feel within myself the same nurturing, supporting, healing, and loving energy that brought all life into being. Sometimes, when I do this at night, I'll see and feel the entire universe with all its stars and galaxies reflected within myself. Sometimes, I'll shrink my awareness down to a specific deep trench like the Mariana Trench which is always nice because here, it is so peaceful and quiet because the deeper layers of the ocean remain still no matter how violent the storms are at its surface. Sometimes, I'll go up to the north pole and become one of the icebergs there. Some of the ice has been around longer than the human race actually and I kind of feel like a crystal ball of sorts and during the winter months where it is dark for 6 months straight, I am inspired by my surroundings to explore and pass through the darkness within myself by confronting my shadow and integrating it back into myself instead of repressing and hiding it in the deepest parts of my subconscious mind. Sometimes, I'll break in waves against some shore of a tropical island, or I'll pass by a megaladon and realize somehow, I ended up travelling back in time during the process of all this, and then, because I'm tired, I'll relax and dissolve into trillions of waves or maybe, if I have some energy left, I'll become a humpback whale and migrate up and down the oceans while singing out to my friends and that deep beautiful voice that they have, or maybe I'll.."

Marisa stopped talking when one of Kayla's teddy bears bumped into her. As she spoke, she had been so focused on what she was saying and Casey had been so focused on listening to her that neither had noticed the zombies swarming around them. In fact, they had been so absorbed in their conversation that the zombies had not noticed them.

"What the heck?" asked Casey, "So, I guess we have to find a new hiding place. Oh wait, where did all these teddy bears come from? Ok, I am really confused right now."

Marisa, deciding she didn't even want to know, returned to eating her whatever it was she had ordered for lunch that day.


End file.
